Echoes
by txtmstrjoe
Summary: "Echoes" is a realistic, gritty, embellished retelling of a seminal moment from "V: The Final Battle": The capture of resistance leader, Juliet Parrish. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Reviews sought and welcomed. Thank you! NOTE: "Echoes" has been revised; chapter revisions will be posted here, so check back soon to see how it's changed from before. As always, thanks!
1. Prologue

**Echoes**

**Prologue:**

"_Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."_

_("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.") _

- Dante Alighieri, "La Divina Commedia"

"2030 situation report, please."

"All stations report situation normal, Jason. EHB1 all clear." Lisa sighed. "Same as at 2000 Hours."

"Just another one of our typical exciting nights," said Jason, the Chief Hangar Control Officer in charge of the Executive Hangar Bay of the Los Angeles Mother Ship.

"Working here practically defines excitement."

"I see you're learning, and doing so quickly."

"Learning what?"

"This most human of behaviors."

"Which is..?"

"Sarcasm, my dear. Sarcasm."

"What, are you implying that the night shift in the Executive Hangar Bay is so desperately lacking in excitement?"

"Well, I do try to do things so that there are no surprises."

"Or as few of them as possible."

"Right, quite right."

"I guess it should be expected. After all, we do work the night shift, and we hardly get any shuttle traffic at these hours."

"True."

"And Diana seldom, if ever, needs transport down to the surface, or to any of the Mother Ships. Most of her work she does up here."

"Well, lately that has not been the case, what with all the preparations down below for tonight's event at the Medical Center."

"True, though she is usually back on board by 1700 Hours." Lisa paused, her finger touching her chin for a moment. "Jason, why are we not watching the feed of the broadcast?"

"We're on duty. We're not supposed to be distracted by peripheral events."

"'Peripheral events'? I would hardly call John's broadcast a 'peripheral event.'"

"It is, for us. It has no bearing as far as our specific duties are concerned."

Lisa looked at him. "Now I can't tell if you mean that sarcastically or if you're being serious."

"My dear, you are precious." He walked over to a bank of monitors on an unoccupied console in their control room. "Very well. I'll find the feed to the broadcast below, and we'll-"

The sudden blare of an alarm klaxon stopped Jason in mid-sentence. "This is a Priority 1 Emergency Alert," said a voice over the public address system, just slightly louder than the alarm itself.

"That's Martin." Lisa easily recognized the voice.

"Repeat, this is a Priority 1 Emergency Alert. All personnel in the Executive Hangar section prepare to receive the Supreme Commander's squad ship. ETA is two minutes. Repeat, ETA for Supreme Commander squad ship is two minutes."

"Is this a drill?" Lisa asked as she fine-tuned her headset, focusing most of her attention onto her terminal.

"I would assume that it is not." Jason looked over Lisa's shoulder, finding the Supreme Commander's shuttle on her instruments. "There it is, on final approach."

"Do you think something happened planet-side?"

"That is a moot point." Jason looked at the ETA countdown on Lisa's terminal. "Alert hangar security to prepare to receive the Supreme Commander and notify hangar personnel to attend to his shuttle."

Lisa complied, speaking into her microphone with urgent professionalism. Jason walked over to the window overlooking the hangar bay, observing his crew moving into their positions. Security personnel, with their gleaming gold helmets and gold trim on the shoulders of their uniforms, arrayed themselves in two rows just beneath Jason's window.

_I wonder what_ _happened down there_, thought Jason. Without looking back at her, he called out to Lisa, "ETA?"

"Countdown is at fifty seconds. Shields are being disarmed and all atmospheric pressure equalizers are being activated."

Jason nodded and watched the massive bay doors open at the far end of the hangar. Even in the gloom of the Los Angeles nighttime sky he could see the gleaming white hull of the approaching shuttle. The bay doors were fully open by the time the nose of the craft was about twenty meters from the entrance into the hangar bay.

"Supreme Commander's squad ship thirty seconds from touchdown," Lisa said, then proceeded to count down the time.

The Supreme Commander's craft glided with a quiet whirr of its engines into its assigned dock, its landing gear already extended and just a meter above the surface of the hangar. The assembled security forces marched dutifully to the shuttle's port side and lined up in two columns perpendicular to the hatch.

The whoosh of displaced air and the hissing spit of pneumatic pressure valves releasing echoed in the hangar as the shuttle landed gently. Almost immediately the port hatch yawned open, separating itself into two sections like a great white beak. The landing ramp was about a foot off of the deck when a pair of golden-helmeted security troops led a quick, almost panicked procession out of the shuttlecraft. From his elevated vantage point Jason could see that in the midst of the throng of security personnel was John.

"Jason..." Lisa started to say when she saw the feed from the security cameras.

"I see him."

John's synth-skin mask was torn on its left side, exposing the dark greenish-black scales underneath! _So something _did _happen down at the Medical Center. _

"What happened to the Supreme Commander?" asked Lisa, almost panicked. "Was this the result of an accident? Or what could-"

"Alert Cosmetics," Jason ordered, wanting to keep his subordinate under control. "Tell them the Supreme Commander needs to be attended to immediately."

Lisa complied. Jason started thinking quickly. _How could this be the result of an accident? The synth-skin masks are incredibly resilient; only deliberate attempts to breach them can cause that kind of damage._

"Cosmetics has been alerted," Lisa reported. "How could this have happened?" she asked again. "Is there any way to find out what happened planet-side?"

"Unfortunately we can only find out what Security and Master Control see fit to disclose," replied Jason. "Especially regarding something like this."

"Perhaps the feed from Earth can shed light on the matter?"

"Perhaps you're right-"

Jason returned to the unoccupied terminal and logged into the Mother Ship's database system. He scanned the menu for a link to view the broadcast feed from the Los Angeles Medical Center. "I can't find the feed."

"That's odd. Perhaps a manual search query?"

"Right. I'll try that now."

Jason tried the query, but was surprised when Martin's face appeared on the screen instead. "Jason, this is an unauthorized search request."

"Unauthorized? Even with the proper login and security codes?"

"Yes."

"By whose authority?"

"The Mother Ship commander's."

"I thought my security clearance was high enough to gain access to the Med Center feed?"

"All security clearances have been withdrawn. The order came from Diana herself." Martin paused for a moment. "We have had some problems, both down below and up here, specifically the broadcast control center."

"What kind of problems?"

"We presently don't yet know, but it appears that the rebels in Los Angeles have found a way to infiltrate and disrupt the event at the Med Center; moreover, we somehow lost control over our own communications and broadcast equipment here on the Mother Ship and were not able to do an interrupt."

"I'm sorry, Martin. I didn't know-"

"An apology is unnecessary. I would suggest, however, to cease all attempts to satisfy any curiosity you or your crew may have regarding what may have happened planet-side."

"The advice is duly noted."

"I'm glad we understand each other."

Jason terminated the comm link to the bridge. He walked over to the observation window, just watching his crew work on servicing the Supreme Commander's shuttle. For fifteen minutes he stood there, quiet, unmoving, privately contemplating his conversation with Martin, when Lisa interrupted his thoughts.

"Jason, I have Security, from the Medical Center, on the comm."

"What about?"

"They are ordering us to prepare to receive a prisoner. ETA is three minutes. I now have Diana's shuttle on my scope."

"A prisoner? We don't receive prisoners here."

"Standby, I'll put them on the loud," Lisa said. She spoke into her mic. "Brian, the Hangar Control Officer reiterates that we do not receive prisoners into this hangar bay."

"Consider this an exception due to extenuating circumstances," Brian said. "Diana herself captured this prisoner, and Steven is personally overseeing the transfer up to the Mother Ship." He added, ominously, "Refusal of this order is not an option available to you."

"Very well," Jason said. "We have the shuttle on our instruments. Inform Diana that we will receive the prisoner and provide assistance to Steven in whatever capacity he might require."

"Acknowledged."

Lisa terminated the link to the Medical Center and looked at Jason.

"We have no choice but to comply," he replied. "Alert our crew; prepare to receive incoming shuttle."

"Understood," said Lisa, frowning.

"You're disappointed that we cannot feed our curiosity."

"Aren't you?"

"I'll put it to you this way: This is more excitement than we both had reckoned on having for tonight."

"I suppose you're right," Lisa said grudgingly. She spun her chair around to view her terminal again. "Shuttle ETA is one minute. Alerting Security to assist in prisoner absorption."

"Well done."

"I bet you this prisoner played a part in the 'disruption' Martin spoke about earlier."

Jason frowned. "I believe you are correct. I think that it is indeed very likely this prisoner is one of the rebels and was somehow involved in the disruption Martin alluded to earlier." He looked out towards the hangar entrance. "ETA?"

"Commencing final landing countdown now. Twenty three seconds to dock... twenty two..."

Jason watched the second shuttle's progress into the hangar, listening to Lisa's countdown. When the countdown reached zero, the craft had completed its landing cycle, and a dozen security troops assembled at the shuttle's port hatch. The hatch opened, but nobody disembarked. Instead, a pair of security troops boarded the shuttle.

A few seconds later, Steven strode haughtily down the landing ramp, flanked by a pair of his troops, their sidearms drawn and held in the ready position. Behind them marched another pair of security troops, both of them holding a young woman dressed in a white evening gown. Finally, the last to descend the landing ramp was a pair of Shock Troopers, their laser rifles poking into the young woman's lower back.

Jason looked at the prisoner closely as she slipped and slid on the deck as the guards fairly dragged her away from the shuttle. For some reason she wasn't wearing any shoes, and her stockinged feet were obviously not able to find much grip on the surface of the hangar floor. Her evening gown looked slightly damaged, the sheer white cape dangling freely and off of her shoulders.

"She looks scared," Lisa said. She was watching the security feed on her monitor.

"I'm sure she must be." Jason sighed, as though out of pity. "And she has every reason to be, if Diana decreed her to be brought up here."

Lisa looked up at Jason, feeling suddenly very afraid.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1:**

_In truth, I found myself on the brink_

_of an abyss, the melancholy valley_

_containing thundering, unending wailings._

Mike Donovan looked at his watch again. "3:32," he muttered darkly before yawning. He was fighting a losing battle against both a desperate need to sleep and an overwhelming wave of despair that threatened to engulf him.

"Hey, look," Elias Taylor began, trying to mask his own concern. He put his hands on Donovan's shoulders and gave him a light shake. "All we can do right now is wait. She'll call in as soon as she's able to."

"And what if she can't?"

Elias looked at Mike grimly. "Come on, man, we all need some rest."

"Easier said than done." Mike smiled wanly. "It wasn't you who decided to leave her behind."

He sighed, trying to convince himself that leaving Julie behind in that hall to face the rush of Visitor Shock Troopers at the Medical Center was the correct choice. She had decided to protect the resistance group she led by providing covering fire. She bought just enough time for the rebels to escape to the roof via a deactivated elevator shaft.

At the moment Donovan had to choose: Should he go with the original plan and escape and complete the mission? Or should he risk the death of the entire Los Angeles resistance group by trying to get Julie from the hospital corridor?

His decision to leave her now wrenched at his insides. Doubt and despair gripped his heart and brought chilling terror to his mind. Not knowing the consequences of his decision to leave Julie behind, indeed, was the most terrifying of all fears.

"Damn it," he said quietly, his gaze falling to the floor.

**VVVVV**

"Shadow to Eagle Eye." The radio crackled with some static. "This is Shadow to Eagle Eye. All quiet down there, huh, bro?" The male voice over the speaker, despite being barely a murmur, had a distinctive Southern drawl.

"Affirmative," answered someone with a gravelly voice. The owner of that deep, rough voice shifted his body position, barely rustling the grass on which his abdomen rested. The man was dressed all in black. He held the night-vision binoculars up to his eyes, searching for any signs of activity in the abandoned sewer plant. "I think they've finally shut down for the night."

"So, you what do you think? These guys for real? Intel wasn't real heavy with the details on this group."

"That's actually a credit to them."

"How d'ya figure?"

"Well, they know how to stay hidden now, don't they?"

The Southerner was silent for a moment. "You've got a point there."

"Until now, that is." The man in black's radio hissed with static as he pressed the transmit button. "Their last covert action at that processing plant in Pomona was sloppy, but at least it gave us a chance to pick up the scent."

"Copy that."

"Still, I doubt these people are professionals." The gruff-voiced man in black peered through the binoculars again. "You've got to admit one thing, though."

"Yeah? What?"

"These people, they're brave."

The Southerner chuckled. "No kidding. They've got big balls, crashing the lizards' fancy party at the hospital."

"That's one way to say it."

"And what would _you_ say?"

The man in black gazed through his binoculars again. "I'd say they're suicidal." He shook his head. "I think you can credit our mutual acquaintance for that."

"I guess he's pretty damn persuasive."

"You could say that, yeah." The man in black yawned silently. "Wake up call at 0500?"

"Roger that. Will buzz ya in about an hour and a half. Over and out."

**VVVVV**

"I want her on the program immediately: Solitary confinement; sleep deprivation; environmental discomfort; low-carbohydrate rations. I intend to start working on her the day after tomorrow, in the evening."

"As you wish, Diana. Shall I instruct the unit supervisor to begin preliminary chemical induction at this time as well?"

"Not yet. I want to supervise the entire operation myself. You are merely to ensure that she is prepared. Do not delegate this assignment; I know I don't usually involve you in procedures of this kind, but I need this to be done by someone I can absolutely trust. I cannot leave this to Steven or any of his lackeys."

"What about crew selection?"

Diana was silent for a moment. "I will select the members of the crew and will notify them myself of their assignment. Once I've made my selections, they will relieve you from operational status on this case."

"Understood."

"Oh, and Martin?" Diana arched a perfect eyebrow.

"Diana?"

"How goes the investigation into the failure of the broadcast transmission safeguards?"

"All preliminary indications are that the incident was due to a random equipment failure."

"I find that difficult to believe; the coincidence is far too pointed for a purely random occurrence. There's no chance of sabotage?"

Martin paused for a moment. "As I said, the investigation is at a preliminary stage. As and when the investigative team ascertains more facts and gathers more evidence, I shall make sure you are advised accordingly. Especially if sabotage is likely."

"Very well."

Diana clicked the comm link off, then turned towards the main lobby of the Los Angeles Medical Center.

Despite the lack of sleep and the strain she was under, the dark-haired Visitor commander didn't seem to lack vigor. War, after all, necessitated some sacrifices.

She just wished, in her heart of hearts, that some sacrifices were unnecessary… and that some necessary ones, such as of incompetent comrades and of inferior beings who drew and deserved her contempt, could actually _be_ made. Life would be much more straightforward if only necessary actions were actually without any regrettable repercussions.

Presently, she saw someone who she would gladly sacrifice. Steven, the head of Visitor Security, was directing operations in the hospital lobby. He had just arrived back from the Mother Ship; he looked imperious as he ordered subordinates around. He didn't seem to notice her enter the lobby, which only increased Diana's already considerable ire and disdain for him.

_He has the gall to pretend that none of this is his fault._

Steven stiffened when he finally saw Diana, and she thought she saw the quick flicker of equal parts of respectful fear and hatred on his synth-skin face. She smiled formally at him, and he returned the gesture with a crisp click of his boot heels. She motioned for him to follow her into the privacy of an adjacent office.

"Close the door," Diana ordered as she took the leather chair behind the big desk in the office. After a moment she asked, "What do you intend to do with all of these humans, Steven?"

"I have ordered my troops to sequester the humans in the hospital's lecture hall for now. We should be ready for the re-shoots in about forty minutes." Steven paused, the veneer of his confidence showing some flaws. "Diana, I _assure_ you that the next phase of the operation shall proceed without any problems."

"A curious phrase. 'The next phase,' you say." Her fingers met in a steeple in front of her lips. "For your sake, I do hope that tonight's disaster will prove to be a fluke. Otherwise…"

"Understood." Steven allowed himself to relax a little when Diana started to rise. "I shall vindicate myself, I promise you."

"Deeds, not words, Steven. Promise only what you can deliver." She walked towards the door out of the office, waiting for him to open the door for her.

"I intend to."

"How so?"

"We have unraveled the mystery of how the rebels managed to infiltrate this facility despite my security measures. The rebel we captured tonight had a counterfeit pass on her person. I have deduced that all the rebel infiltrators possessed other such counterfeits."

"That conclusion is straightforward enough, Steven," Diana said derisively. "The question now is, what is your next move?"

"We now know who manufactured the counterfeits. They were made by a man named Daniel Pascal."

"How have you ascertained this?"

"Our contacts at the LAPD were very quick to point to Pascal as the only counterfeiter who operates within this area with the expertise and equipment to do such an obviously effective job."

"This counterfeiter is a small piece of a much bigger puzzle," Diana replied thoughtfully.

"Indeed. But this piece will inevitably lead to the destruction of the entire rebel movement. I have already dispatched Brian to apprehend Pascal; he will divulge the location of the rebel hideout, I promise you."

Steven opened the door leading back into the main lobby and followed Diana as she left the office. "Capturing the rebel tonight is already paying dividends, wouldn't you say?"

"No thanks to you, Steven."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2:**

_I reached a place where every light is muted,_

_which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest..._

"We Visitors are particularly proud of this evening's ceremony because it gives us a chance to repay the wonderful hospitality the people of Earth have given us ever since we arrived here. You all have done everything you can to help us collect the resources we need to save the people of our planet. It seems only fair that we reciprocate."

Booming applause greeted John's speech as he stood at the raised podium. The podium itself was a microphone-festooned stairway landing on the way up to the second floor offices above the lobby itself. Visitor insignias, banners, and propaganda posters decorated every blank space on the walls. The Supreme Commander smiled benevolently as he looked down into every single camera in the cavernous hall.

Below him, and beyond the range of the cameras, red-garbed Visitor soldiers and security officers trained various laser weapons on the applauding audience.

"Now give me some shots of the crowd applauding. Focus on the people who seem the most enthusiastic," Diana said into the comm link which connected her to every Visitor in the adjacent lobby. She watched and directed the proceedings from within the communications room. "John, step off the podium and descend to the floor. Brian, direct the crowd to surround John and congratulate him as he reaches the lobby." She nodded silently as she watched the scene play itself out on the monitor. "That's good. Print that one.

"Now, direct Mrs. Dupres before Camera 3. Make sure her makeup is impeccable, and that the background crowd is most cheerful."

As Diana watched the monitors, she let her mind wander briefly to the previous night. She remembered with some regret killing Kristine Walsh, her handpicked media representative who acted as an ostensibly impartial official Visitor spokesperson.

_She should never have betrayed me_.

Her regret was not rooted in any remorse for the murder; remorse would imply that Diana had an emotional attachment to Kristine. Nothing was further from the truth. Kristine was a tool, something to exploit to the full in the name of duty.

Diana understood perfectly the value of Kristine's service. Walsh's credibility with the public was beyond reproach. What made Kristine so attractive to the Visitors and Diana, however, were her ambition and penchant for self-advancement. Kristine's self-centered motivations made her pliable. Her natural cowardice only made her easier to manipulate.

_Kristine was a coward, but even cowards can act with courage, even if just once in their lives._

She defied Diana and told the worldwide television audience that what they had just seen – the young leader of the resistance ripping John's mask off – was not a terrorist hoax but a call to rebellion. Diana then knew that Walsh could not be allowed to live and pulled the trigger herself.

It was a necessary sacrifice, one that duty demanded. The tool had outlived its usefulness and had to be disposed of.

Diana couldn't deny that Kristine's talents were a potent weapon in the propaganda war. She, however, understood and accepted that that sword cut both ways: The shock of seeing a Visitor laser weapon killing Kristine just as she implored her viewers to resist the alien invaders was powerful enough to undermine everything she had done.

_Kristine must not be allowed to become a martyr. _

Diana looked into her monitor. She wondered briefly just how effective the owner of the dignified, aristocratic countenance on the screen could be in Kristine Walsh's old role. "Are you ready, Mrs. Dupres?," she said into her comm link. Eleanor nodded and assumed a neutral facial expression as she looked into the camera lens. Pleased, Diana said, "You may begin, Mrs. Dupres. Just relax and deliver your lines, please."

Slowly, Eleanor Dupres spoke into her microphone, her eyes looking to all the world as the very emblems of sincerity. "What you have just seen is the _real _broadcast given by John, the Visitors' Supreme Commander. It is a special service that we give to you, loyal viewers and friends of the Visitors.

"As you know, the broadcast that many of you at home saw last night was interrupted by members of the underground scientists' conspiracy. Aside from spreading ridiculous anti-Visitor propaganda, which reasonable people should automatically dismiss as mere science fiction, the most unfortunate outcome from last night's events was the murder of Kristine Walsh, the Visitors' Official Spokesperson, on live television.

"I'm told now that the authorities have confirmed that Michael Donovan, the former newsman, was one of the leaders of this terrorist cabal which captured, coerced, and then assassinated Miss Walsh.

"Not only did these terrorists kill her in cold blood, but they also tried to destroy our innocence and our faith in our Visitor friends. They compelled Kristine to lie about our friends, and then killed her using captured Visitor weapons in an attempt to frame them."

Eleanor exhaled, her face taking on a look of determination and cool strength. "However, we all must resolve to believe the truth in all matters. Only through this spirit will this terrorist conspiracy be unraveled; with **your** help, it **will**cease to exist as a threat."

_Perhaps I overestimated poor Kristine's value after all_, Diana thought with a smirk.

Eleanor continued speaking into the camera. "And so, as we end this message to you, I want to speak for all the peace-loving people in the world, with whom I share gratitude that the Visitors have given **to** us far more than they could have asked **from** us." Eleanor paused briefly, then an aristocratic smile broke through. "I'm Eleanor Dupres, from the Los Angeles Medical Center."

The camera winked off a few seconds after Eleanor concluded her spiel. The patrician woman exhaled emphatically, as though she had exerted much effort. She looked at Steven, who had been watching the proceedings with John just out of the camera's range. The chief of Visitor Security flashed her a reassuring smile.

Eleanor walked over to Steven and John. "How was that?" She wore the expression a child might when asking for an adult's approval.

"Perfect," Diana said as she emerged from her secluded position in the nearby communications room. "Truly excellent for a first take."

"As long as you're pleased," Eleanor beamed.

"We're very pleased," said John, smiling genuinely.

"Yes, I have no doubt that the audience will… accept this version of the broadcast. You did exceedingly well," Diana said, reaching out to touch Eleanor's arm affectionately.

The older woman gushed, "Well, I'm just glad to have been available."

"And we are just as glad you are," John said, his tone oozing with gratitude. He looked at Diana furtively as Eleanor reached for Steven's hands.

"I'll see you later?" Eleanor asked Steven, her head tilted slightly.

"You sure will." Steven gave her his best, most beaming and friendliest smile.

"Will you still need me for more takes, Diana?"

"I believe we have everything we need," Diana said. "I'll have Steven here ask for you if we need more of your expertise."

"Well, if there'll be nothing else…" Eleanor smiled warmly. "I'll have to tend to my husband now. I'm afraid he's a bit of the secretly jealous type." The Visitor officers laughed politely at Eleanor's mild joke. "Are we free to go home?"

"But of course," Steven replied. "I'd be glad to escort you myself, but I'm afraid there is more work to be done here."

"Don't you worry," Eleanor smiled fondly. "I'll hold you to your promise, though. I'll expect to see you later."

"I won't let you down, my dear Eleanor," Steven assured her, reaching out to kiss her hand.

Eleanor smiled at each of the Visitors again, then turned to search for Arthur Dupres amongst the throng. Diana watched her for a moment, then arched a perfect eyebrow at Steven. "You're very accessible."

"When it's useful."

"You made **us** veryaccessible last night," Diana countered derisively, pleased that Steven had fallen so easily into the trap.

John seized the initiative. "If Diana hadn't covered up your bungling of the affair with this bit of instant movie-making, our credibility would be all but destroyed."

Steven raised his hands defensively, his insistent tone simultaneously apologetic and defensive. "The rebel vermin will be exterminated by nightfall. The counterfeiter, Pascal, broke easily under interrogation, and we've gotten the information we've needed; we'll be launching a major attack on their headquarters. They'll be a memory within hours."

**VVVVV**

"She's had enough. Showers off."

The technician next to Martin nodded, then twisted the dial controlling the jets of ice-cold water to the off position.

Martin watched Juliet Parrish immediately gasp and shiver inside the shower stall. Her back was to him, and she was up on her tiptoes with her arms stretched high above her head, her hands bound in cuffs. She was completely naked.

He had done his best to keep out of her view, making sure that he was always behind her. He had never met her before, never even knew what she looked like, but he knew about her from conversations he had shared with Mike Donovan. He could only presume that Mike had talked about him with her as well. Whether or not Donovan had showed her a picture of him, Martin had no idea.

_This is very dangerous_, he thought to himself.

_What if Diana makes her talk? What if I get exposed? That would be the end of the Fifth Column._

Even as the tide of panic rose quickly in his heart, Martin forced himself to stay calm. He told himself to stay in control even as events were spiraling inexorably beyond the influence of his will.

He fought to ignore every instinct compelling him to act with compassion now, even as he knew that Julie was sure to suffer greatly once she was finally delivered into Diana's hands. He knew that to obey his usual instincts, to try to somehow save her from her cruel fate, was a path to suicide. There was no way he could free Julie and get her off the Mother Ship without risking his own life. He was sure of it.

_It would be a lot worse if they caught me in the act. They would torture me, force me to talk. I would never want to, but I cannot take the chance of betraying the Fifth Column._

_I **cannot** take that risk, under any circumstances._

The more he thought about things, the more Martin realized that any choice other than to do Diana's bidding was no choice at all. He had to accept the grim truth: He had to sacrifice Julie's well-being for a greater good.

_I will probably loathe myself for the rest of my days_, Martin thought, _but what choice do I have?_

And so now, Martin became deaf to Julie's moans of misery and despair as she hung there by her arms, wet and shivering, the agony building up in her shoulders as they were forced to bear most of her weight. He had listened to her protests against being made to strip, as well as to her screams of pain as she endured the ice-cold cleansing shower. The anguish that was plain in her voice gouged out an indelible mark on his conscience.

_Why did she have to get captured?_

He hardened himself against the pangs of guilt now.

Now was not a time for compassion. Instead, ruthless pragmatism was what the present circumstances demanded.

"Search her," he said to the technician. "Make sure she isn't hiding any contraband."

Martin didn't watch as the technician approached Julie to comply with his instructions. He heard her groan when the technician spread her legs a few more inches apart; he knew without looking that she was squirming and burning with the worst kind of humiliation as the technician performed the loathsome operation. Martin fully understood that this was completely impractical and unnecessary since Visitor scanning equipment could have done the same job easily and noninvasively. However, he also fully knew how effective this was as a demonstration to the prisoner of who had all the power, as well as who had absolutely none of it.

"She has nothing, sir," reported the technician after a few seconds of work.

Martin nodded, and then said, "Put her clothes in storage."

As the technician gathered up Julie's discarded clothing and put the items away, the door into the room opened. Martin turned around to see someone familiar.

"Bruce," he greeted in a low voice. "Diana told me an hour ago to expect you."

Bruce nodded in acknowledgment. "She assigned me to be the primary medical technician for this case. I'm here to perform the baseline medical scans and all other preliminary physical preparations of the subject, as well as to extract some genetic material for testing."

"Genetic material?"

"Yes. Diana wants to see if this prisoner's DNA is compatible for use in some of her experiments."

"What kind of experiments?" Martin's mind flashed to when he led Donovan to Tony Leonetti's mutilated corpse. Leonetti, Donovan's friend and professional colleague, was a victim of one of Diana's earlier experiments on the human anatomy.

"She didn't tell me," Bruce said. "I was only given very specific orders." He leaned in closer, speaking quietly. "I don't have any specific knowledge regarding this matter, but I do know that Diana routinely collects genetic material from all human prisoners. I have long theorized that she uses the material to see if she can recreate an experiment she is rumored to have performed several months ago: There is well-founded speculation that Diana may have been able to facilitate a successful mating between a human female and one of our soldiers."

Martin scratched his forehead. He instantly remembered the role he played in that episode: He helped Robin Maxwell escape the Mother Ship, along with Donovan himself and another human. He had wanted to leave the Mother Ship at that time as well, fearing that his role in that breakout would inevitably be discovered and would cost him his life, except that Donovan convinced him to stay. Mike argued that he could do more to help the rebellion by staying on the Mother Ship and continuing to work closely with Diana.

_Except, of course, I now cannot help Julie out of this predicament._

The irony was too bitter to contemplate.

"Do you think Diana will force this prisoner to breed with one of our own?" asked Martin.

Bruce thought for a second. "I don't know; I'd say that depends on whether or not her genetics are compatible to our own."

"I see." Martin tilted his head towards Julie. "What's next for her?"

"She is to be given a sedative, then I'll be surgically installing the conversion interface implants onto her. After that I will examine her, and then Paul will come to interrogate her."

Martin was surprised. "Paul... he's not from Security."

"Indeed. But he is Diana's top man in my section. He is an expert at what he does."

"And what will be the nature of the interrogation Paul will be conducting?"

"According to Diana, she mainly wants to see if this prisoner will corroborate the information extracted from the counterfeiter that Security arrested a few hours ago. However, Paul's interrogation also functions as the first step to learning about the prisoner. The information we get from her is studied and analyzed, mainly by Diana, but also with Paul's input."

"I see," Martin said. "And what is the purpose of your medical examination?"

"To form a good picture of her current health, to gauge her physical capability to endure the conversion process, and to discover any physiological flaws so that we can either sidestep them or exploit them. Conversion is incredibly stressful; it is not unknown for some subjects to die during the process."

Martin nodded grimly. "I see. Thank you for educating me about the conversion process. I was ignorant of much of it; in truth, in a way I am very glad that I had never been involved in the conversion of a prisoner prior to this one. I am satisfied that I have done as Diana had asked, and that this prisoner is now in the most capable hands."

Bruce looked at Julie, then back at Martin. "I'll be taking over proceedings from here, then."

Martin nodded. "Very well. I will report the latest to Diana." He looked at Julie one last time. "She is a very important prisoner, supposedly the top leader of the local resistance movement. Treat her accordingly."

"As you say, Martin," Bruce said, bowing his head respectfully.

**VVVVV**

Mike Donovan's face betrayed nothing of the turmoil he was feeling as he watched the television. Compulsively, he looked at his watch, then cast a quick glance at the telephone. It was 10:47 in the morning. He narrowed his mental focus past the sounds of softly clanging metal and the rustling of paper wrapping and the occasional bits of conversation amongst his comrades. Dark, brooding thoughts swirled around in his head. His mood wasn't helped by the fact that he barely slept the night before. With a grunt, Donovan stood up and extracted the Beretta from his armpit holster. He looked at the weapon intently, clicking the safety off.

"Can you believe they're trying to pull off this fake as the real thing?" asked an incredulous Robert Maxwell. John was onscreen, soaking in the applause from the assembled throng within the Los Angeles Medical Center's main lobby. Maxwell, like the rest of the resistance fighters, was busy packing up supplies and materiel for immediate transport.

With a resigned shrug, Caleb Taylor said, "America will buy it, too." His deep bass was tinged with sadness. He finished wrapping up the last of the dinner plates, then handed them to his son Elias.

Elias took the plates, carefully placing them inside a box filled with foam packing peanuts. He sighed, "They sure will." With his eyes on the plates, he continued tonelessly. "I mean, who's gonna believe lizards invented a cure for cancer?"

Maxwell looked at the younger Taylor, unsure of his meaning. Then Caleb spoke again. "This moving's a waste of time. Julie'll never talk."

Donovan removed the ammo clip from his pistol, inspected it, then rearmed the weapon and replaced it into his holster. He grabbed his tan leather jacket, then said as he stalked away, "If they can cure cancer, they can extract information."

"Donovan, where are you going?" Maxwell asked. He looked at both Caleb and Elias, then shrugged when Donovan didn't answer.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_But tell me who you are, you who are set_

_in such a dismal place, such punishment..._

"We have confirmed her identity: Juliet Parrish."

Diana nodded at her aide on the monitor, then shifted her gaze onto a second screen. On it was displayed the information her aide had collected for her. "How interesting. A biochemistry student… she was a colleague of Dr. Rudolph Metz's several months ago." She read the data quickly. "She disappeared shortly after the declaration of martial law."

"Yes. Security was keeping a cursory surveillance on her as part of the operation to implicate Dr. Metz."

"Did Security try to track her down?" asked Diana. "Perhaps this entire fiasco may have been averted if she had been apprehended months ago." The failure to keep a tighter watch on this Juliet Parrish might yet prove to be another nail in Steven's professional coffin.

"No. At the time they concluded that she was no threat; she _is_ still just a student and not a prominent bio-scientist. There was no reason to believe that she was a potential threat. It would have been a waste of time and resources."

"An assumption that proved wrong," Diana said quietly. "But not one for which you are responsible. However," she continued, slowly, "you _are_ responsible for the integrity of this information."

"I cross-checked and confirmed the data using the standard protocols: Personal information from the appropriate archives; educational, employment, credit, medical histories as well. It's certainly a good thing these Americans are fastidious with their record-keeping." Diana's aide could barely summon enough nerve to say more. "The data's integrity is beyond reproach. You have my assurance."

Diana touched her chin thoughtfully. "How about criminal history?"

"None whatsoever. However, there is a reference link under the appropriate heading which you might find useful. It refers to an incident report her parents made."

Diana allowed herself a small smile as she read. "Excellent. I'm sure your work will prove useful and valuable to me once I'm able to return to the Mother Ship." Diana gave her aide a small smile. "Thank you, Paul. That will be all for now."

Paul bowed respectfully, then the monitor faded to black.

**VVVVV**

A sigh escaped the man's lips as the shutter clicked repeatedly. He looked through the viewfinder and adjusted the lens. Except for the camera's clicks, the man, dressed in a black leather coat, gray wool sweater, and dark blue jeans was silent as he stood up and stretched from his crouch amongst the blades of grass.

He touched the ear piece buried within his left ear, then resumed looking through the Nikon's viewfinder. _Here's where the fun begins_, he thought to himself.

A few moments later, the grass behind the stranger swished quietly. The man in black didn't move.

"Are you looking for something, my friend?" said Sancho Gomez as he jabbed the tip of his automatic assault rifle into the black-clad stranger's back.

"Move the M-16 or I'll make you eat it," said the stranger, his voice deep and grating.

Sancho wondered for a moment how his captive knew with absolute certainty what type of firearm he was carrying, then submerged the thought. He gestured to his hidden backup. "Hey, Mark, come here."

The former police officer moved quickly from behind a parked car and positioned himself in front of the man in the black coat. Mark McIntyre looked down on the crouched man.

He had thinning dark hair and an unremarkable face, the kind which might easily disappear in a crowd, except that his forehead was creased with wrinkles and furrows, as well as scars at various points on the visage which hinted at a hard life. Mark had to suppress an involuntary shudder when the stranger pushed him aside with the zoom lens of his Nikon, revealing a look in his eyes the ex-cop had seen only in the most hardened of men: The man in black knew how to kill, and could do so without regret or remorse.

"Okay, no more pictures," Mark said calmly, pressing his service revolver into the stranger's left armpit.

"You're in my way, piglet," the stranger growled. He peered into his camera's viewfinder again.

Mark, stung by the insult, jabbed the revolver deeper into the man's ribs. His lips formed a thin line. "You've got a nasty mouth on you, pal," he said as the man rose from his crouch, an indignant glare on his scarred face.

"You and me, we're going for a little walk," Sancho said, clicking the safety off of the M-16.

"C'mon," said Mark, pressing his pistol into the man's ribs again. "Let's go."

"In about five seconds, you're gonna be cloud dancing," drawled someone from behind Sancho.

Mark stiffened as he saw a burly man aiming the Ingram-Mac at him. The bearded Southerner wearing the Ray-Bans and olive military jacket had caught him completely by surprise. The ex-cop cursed at himself, for he had neglected a cardinal rule from the academy: **Always assume your quarry has backup**. He and Sancho held their hands up high, allowing the beefy man to easily confiscate their weapons.

The scar-faced man casually used his camera to move Mark out of the way. "They're all bottlenecked in there, front and back," he said to his partner. "This place isn't a camp; it's a tomb."

He grabbed Sancho by the back of the shirt collar. "Come here, slick," he said. He then fixed his steely gaze on Mark. "Mr. Macho Man, I wanna talk to your boss."

**VVVVV**

Ruby Engels twitched her nose, suppressing a sudden urge to sneeze. The cleanser mix on her sponge gave off harsh fumes. She stopped scrubbing the ornamental stone fixtures lining the edge of the balcony which overlooked the main landing pad at the Visitors' Security Headquarters in Sierra Madre. She rubbed the beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, careful to not move her frowsy wig or to ruin the caked-on, thickly-applied makeup she wore to disguise her features.

She frowned as she watched a large group of gold-helmeted Visitor Security troops march off of a just-arrived shuttle transport. Just beyond the new arrival was another Visitor troop transport. A squad of Shock Troopers, garbed in red and black with black headgear, were lining up waiting to get on board.

"Load up," said one of the Visitors down below. Ruby saw it was the Visitor named Brian. "We leave to attack the rebel headquarters in one minute."

Ruby could scarcely believe her ears. _Did he just say that? _

_How did they find headquarters?_

Among the myriad possibilities spinning in her mind, a thought rushed to the forefront.

_Julie can't have told them where we are. She can't have._

_I've got to warn the others_, Ruby thought to herself as she looked at her watch. Twenty minutes to go before her lunch break, and a chance to get to her cell phone – an LAPD-issued unit equipped with an encrypted scrambler from Mark – which she kept in her purse.

_If I don't, they'll all be killed._

**VVVVV**

"What's the matter with you, huh? This is embarrassing!" complained an annoyed Sancho as he, Mark, and two strangers descended into the bowels of the rebel hideout.

"Don't even think about it!" the bearded Southerner bellowed, jabbing his weapon harder into Sancho's back. The big man seemed unaffected by the clicks of assault rifles going off safety being aimed at him and his scar-faced partner.

Scar-face sneered at the array of weaponry aimed at him. "We've got a standoff here," he said to the first wave of resistance fighters he passed. He looked around the rebel hideout as he descended. "Anybody ever clean this dump?"

The strange entourage of captured and captors pushed its way deeper into the sewer plant's innards, into the group's common room. "You should've looked! I told you!" Sancho kept seething. Mark looked mutely at his comrade, not trusting himself to say anything constructive in self-defense. He knew he had made a big mistake, one he was now hoping wouldn't further deteriorate into something tragic.

Mark thought it was strange that the two strangers they tried to apprehend had only captured them to speak with his "boss." Although he didn't appreciate the scarred stranger's overt and aggressive hostility, he recognized that all this was merely posturing.

The ex-cop felt a brief twinge, wondering briefly how Julie was doing. There still was no word from her. He understood that as more time passed, the less likely Julie was going to be able to return to them. Worry and despair dominated him whenever he allowed himself to think of her. It was a sentiment common to everybody in the Los Angeles resistance cell.

The sound of hurrying feet diverted Mark's attention. He turned to see Elias, Robert, Caleb, and many of the other rebel fighters enter the common room with guns drawn. He allowed himself a sigh of relief when he saw Mike Donovan calmly push his way towards the front of this group.

The look on the ex-cameraman's face was inscrutable. "Alright," he said with disarming casualness. He gently waved some of the firearms out of his way. "What happened here?"

"Them!" a flustered Sancho blurted out, extricating himself from the brawny man's grip. He shook loose his denim jacket, then fixed and smoothed it on his chest in an attempt to regain some lost machismo. The Southerner raised his submachine gun and clicked the safety on, a faintly mocking smile on his bearded face.

Donovan scrutinized him, then raised his eyebrow with surprise when the scar-faced man emerged from behind. A peculiar smile broke slowly on Donovan's face. "Oh… well, I guess I should have known you'd crawl out from under some munitions dump sooner or later."

"How you doing, Gooder?"

Scar face's greeting elicited a brief, amused snort from Donovan. "That's short for 'do-gooder.' It's a little nickname he's got for me. Oh, we've met before," he explained to his comrades. "Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, you name it. He blows it up, I cover it with the camera, and the folks back home hate him for it."

Donovan closed the distance between himself and the man in black. "I want you to meet 'Ham' Tyler, master of covert operations, communications, and bad relations."

Tyler jerked a thumb at the bearded Southerner. "This is Chris Farber, my associate." He looked every person assembled in the common room in the eye before proceeding. "And you people are doomed."

The gathered resistance fighters murmured amongst themselves. Tyler's words had clearly taken them aback. He seized the opportunity to press his point further.

"Gooder's got you believing that with a little muscle and God on your side you can pull the bad guys down. Now that kind of thinking's gonna get you dead. It's time you let the professionals do their job."

Donovan scoffed. "Now that sounds familiar."

Tyler whirled around to face him. "Look, Donovan, I didn't come here to fence with you. We don't have time. I'm here to tell you there's a world network, and from now on you'll do as you're told."

"Now wait a minute, pal…" Mark started to say, when Tyler glared at him.

"Shut up." Tyler held Mark's gaze for a moment more, then addressed the assembled group again. "You people got real lucky last night pulling off a nice stunt. But without _proper leadership_ you're gonna get hung out to dry. Now we're organized and we've got a plan, _and_…" Tyler reached out his hand as he spoke, and Farber slapped an ammo magazine into it."…we've got a new kind of ammo that'll cut those lizards in two."

He turned to Donovan again, but spoke loudly enough so that everybody could hear every word. "You can stay independent, get wiped out, or join the organization and really help hammer punch these lizards back off the planet. The choice is up to you."

The rebels whispered amongst themselves again, considering Tyler's message carefully. Some of them, like Robert Maxwell, Caleb Taylor and his son Elias, and a few others, immediately recalled something Juliet had said a mere few months ago: One of the goals of the L.A. resistance should be to seek out and join with other resistance groups as soon as possible. A small guerrilla group like theirs had no chance to win against a mighty, technologically-superior force like the Visitors. All they could ever hope to be was an irritant to the Visitors, the equivalent to being a horsefly to an elephant. All they could ever hope to do was survive, until such time when survival was no longer possible.

An organized and coordinated collection of guerrilla groups, however, had a fighting chance.

Ham Tyler now personified the promise of achieving that very goal.

There were those, however, who had reservations. Mark gave voice to their doubts. "You heard what Donovan said. The guy's a war-monger! Getting people killed turns him on –"

Tyler moved with leopard-like speed and closed a strong, calloused hand on Mark's throat, giving the ex-cop a painful squeeze before shoving him away. "Don't you ever say that!" His deep, gravelly voice betrayed a vestige of emotion, hinting at demons that haunted him. Mark tried to lunge at Ham, but Caleb held him back.

It took only a moment or two before Tyler composed himself anew. He spoke to the group again, assured confidence thick in his tone. "Donovan may hate my guts, but he'll tell you I know what I'm doing."

Tyler slapped the ammo magazine into Donovan's right hand. The ex-newsman feigned nonchalance, twirling the clip with his fingers. He extracted one of the rounds and scrutinized it. It looked like a standard bullet for an Ingram-Mac submachine gun, except that the tip seemed to be covered with a layer of some slippery solid substance.

"You know, we're not killers like you, Tyler," began Donovan, when he heard the ring tone of a cell phone. He saw Father Andrew Doyle, a Roman Catholic priest who had joined the rebel group shortly after its inception, step out of the common room; evidently he was in charge of one of the group's other LAPD-sourced encrypted phones.

"We may be bumping into each other down here, but we're_ a unit_…" he continued, remembering with bitter irony all the times he argued about his penchant to do things on his own with Julie and the others. "We've made more noise than you have."

The ex-cameraman smiled without amusement as he jammed the ammo magazine into Tyler's leather coat pocket forcefully. "They know we're here."

Tyler almost laughed at Donovan's choice of words. "Which brings me to my next point…"

"Donovan!" yelled Father Andrew as he hurried into the common room. Poorly suppressed panic oozed from the priest's voice. "Everybody! That was Ruby on the phone. The Visitors, they're on their way. We've got to get out of here!"

Worried murmurs erupted within the room. Donovan was stunned, momentarily wondering how the Visitors had pinpointed the location of the rebel hideout. _Surely Julie wouldn't have_…

Tyler, as if he could read his mind, leaned in close and said quietly, "It was only a matter of time, Gooder. Surely you figured that out on your own."

"No way," said Mike defensively.

"Believe what you want," Tyler said. "Either way, you still have a big problem at the moment, and you're rather short on time."

"Thanks for stating the obvious."

"Believe it or not, we're on the same side. This time."

Donovan couldn't help but smile. "I thought operators like you never thought in terms of 'sides' when it came to bloodshed."

"Damn it, Gooder, what's wrong with you? You of all people ought to have learned by now that not everything in the world is black and white; nor should it be. It's all about shades of gray. But," Tyler sighed before continuing, "sometimes there is a definite right side and a definite wrong side." Ham's hand clutched Donovan's shoulder and pulled him closer. "Believe me, _I'm _with the right side. And _you _are, too."

Donovan tried to gauge the scar-faced man's trustworthiness. Tyler's brown eyes, like his facial expression, betrayed nothing.

"We'll play it your way. This time."

"I thought you would," Tyler replied quietly. "Knowing you, there's a catch somewhere."

Donovan then turned to the murmuring gaggle of resistance fighters. "Listen up, everybody! Calm down and we'll all get through this!"

The rebels quieted down. Mike continued. "Listen. There's only one way to get out of here, and that's through the sewer tunnels. We need to grab everything we've managed to pack away and get the hell out of here. I'll lead the way." Donovan paused and gestured towards Tyler. "Ham here's gonna prove just how good a demolitions expert he is. He's going to cover our escape."

Tyler stepped forward. "You left yourselves with no real retreat, folks. Bad planning, but you'll learn. Just need _proper leadership_." He turned to Donovan again. "You have a new rabbit hole picked out, Gooder? One your fearless former leader doesn't know about? If not, I've got lots of suggestions."

Donovan did not bother to disguise his ire. "As a matter of fact, we picked one out a couple of hours ago."

"Just get your people out of here. Chris and I have work to do," Tyler replied. "You have any explosives left?"

"Not much, but we'll leave you our stash," said Donovan. He beckoned Tyler and Chris to follow him through the throng of resistance fighters hustling to leave the hideout. He led the mercenaries to where they stored their now-meager supplies of munitions, pulling out a box of dynamite, grenades, fuses, and plastic explosives. "This is all we've got. You think it's enough?" 

"Chris?"

Farber inspected the quantities of explosives. "We're good."

Tyler turned to Donovan. "You've got less than three minutes to get your people out of here. Chris and I will catch up with you at the end of the main service tunnel, the one that spits out at the L.A. River near the I-5 and the 134. I'll have Chris radio the network for transportation from the River to your new hidey-hole."

"Gotcha." The ex-cameraman whirled to leave the mercenaries to their work.

"And Gooder?"

Donovan turned to look back at Tyler, who looked back at him with his inscrutable face. "Good luck."

"You too." He turned and hurried towards the mouth of the sewer tunnel network.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

_and so, when each of them had changed positions,_

_he circled halfway back to his next joust._

The tunnel that led to the abandoned sewer plant echoed with the blare of sirens and flashed with garish blue and red lights in alternating succession. The officer driving the lead squad car turned to his partner riding shotgun. "I can't believe those rebels have been hiding here all this time."

"No kidding," his partner replied. He pointed out the windshield as their squad car emerged from the arch. "Looks like we all got here right on time," referring to the Visitor troop transport descending silently from an altitude of around thirty feet.

The lead police car, three others, and three SWAT trucks arrayed themselves around where the alien shuttle was landing.

As soon as the Visitor craft's hatches opened, dozens of black-helmeted, laser rifle-equipped Shock Troopers rushed out and ran headlong into the sewer plant, evidently trying to capitalize on the element of surprise.

"Some messy shit's gonna go down," said the officer driving the lead squad car.

**VVVVV**

Chris threw a wad of chewing gum wrappers over his shoulder. He walked quickly against the flow of resistance fighters, studying the ceiling above him. His experienced eye traced the beams, pillars and walls, forming a mental picture as to how they were all joined together. He squatted near Tyler, who had unpacked the explosives that Donovan had left for them.

They were in the middle of the structure, and Farber had found the optimum positions to put the various explosives. Chris handed the Ingram-Mac to Tyler.

"You set the charges; I'll cover you," said Tyler. He primed the submachine gun, then rose from his crouch. "You got a Teflon load in this?"

"You bet." Chris worked quickly and efficiently, mixing up batches of plastique and taping together sticks of dynamite in bunches. He worked towards the back end of the building, while his partner ran out towards the front.

As he strode confidently towards the front end of the sewer plant, Tyler studied his surroundings, locating optimum firing positions as well as places where he could ensconce himself in safety. He was pre-visualizing the coming firefight.

He didn't have to wait very long. Hearing and feeling the rush of booted feet, he dove behind a counter and shot a volley of rounds at the first wave of Shock Troopers. Four fell immediately, not even bothering to try to dive for cover, confident that conventional ammunition would never penetrate their black torso armor.

Of course, Tyler's ammunition was anything but conventional. His Ingram-Mac's rounds had Teflon-coated tips, which dramatically increased the ammunition's muzzle speeds and increased its destructive potential. The new ammo went through the alien armor like a hot knife through butter, into the Visitors' bodies, and exited, leaving gory holes that allowed gouts of green blood to spurt through.

Although they were puzzled by the sight of four of their number falling to the barrage of human weaponry, the rest of the Shock Troopers adapted immediately. They flattened themselves against the walls or dove to the floor, giving Tyler as small of a target as possible. They fired their laser rifles at the counter beyond which their quarry had taken cover.

Tyler scampered from behind the counter and ran in a half-crouch towards the main corridor leading to the rear of the building. As he ran, he heard the pulsing, whining blasts and felt the heat from near-misses by the Visitor Shock Troopers all around him. He hid behind the doorway and fired a salvo of his own when he heard the soldiers begin to pursue him, smiling grimly as three more troopers fell.

The corridor echoed with the sounds of staccato submachine gun bursts and the distinctive whine of Visitor laser weapons. Chris smiled. Tyler was doing a great job of buying him more time to plant his explosives systematically. He put the bunches of plastique and dynamite on load-bearing walls and pillars, then prepared the electrical fuse. Farber had no problems as long as he heard the exchanges of gunfire going off in the adjacent corridors.

Meanwhile, Tyler continued to hold off the relentless onslaught of Shock Troopers. He hurried from behind the doorway to his next position, into the headquarters' kitchen area. He dove behind a trio of large cooking pots made of polished steel, then reloaded his weapon with a new clip. Whenever he heard the boots of the alien soldiers, he emerged from behind his cover and fired, always seeing at least two or three of his targets get cut down. If a firefight wasn't a serious matter of survival for Ham Tyler, he might have laughed out loud. There's nothing like having an ace in the hole.

Tyler led his pursuers deeper into the sewer plant, dodging the blue bolts from the alien weapons. When the Shock Troopers were getting too close, he would let loose a long burst of Ingram-Mac suppressing fire, then scamper to safety. He just hoped that his pace was perfect; it wouldn't do himself or Chris any good if he led his pursuers too deep into the plant too quickly.

Timing, he thought grimly, was everything.

Yards away, Chris Farber continued wiring the explosives. The sounds of the battle were getting louder and closer. Yet Farber wasn't alarmed or concerned. He just chewed on the big soft lump of Wrigley's as his world narrowed into tighter focus.

The big Southerner heard a long burst of submachine gun fire, then the high-pitched response from laser rifles. He found himself thinking that it was like a strange kind of song, a duet with starkly different yet harmonious counterpoints. He almost laughed when Tyler dove and rolled into a crouch beside him.

Farber, like Tyler, was a master craftsman in the art of war.

"Having fun?" Chris asked, which elicited a quick snort and what passed for an amused grin from Tyler. Ham caught his breath, then ran towards the edge of the doorway to the kitchen and let loose a long barrage, when suddenly his weapon stopped spitting out its deadly projectiles. He desperately dove to his right, out of the way of the bluish-white bursts of death from the Visitor laser weapons.

"I need another mag," grunted Tyler as he righted himself beside his partner. Farber slapped a fresh one into his waiting hand.

"You really think that kid who led this outfit sold them out so quick?" Chris asked as he twisted two sections of fuse wire together. Just one more charge to go, then the detonator. He just needed another minute or two.

"Who's to say? I don't care about what Gooder and those bozos think. I'm not taking any chances." The spent magazine clattered to the floor as Tyler reset his Ingram-Mac.

"Not your style to do that, anyway," Farber chuckled.

Tyler changed the subject. "How're you doing with those charges? It's getting real busy out there."

"I'm almost finished," Chris replied as he moved away from Tyler, edging towards the very back of the building with an electric fuse line trailing behind him.

Tyler reloaded his weapon, primed it, then sprang back into action. He hid behind another wall, beyond which was the corridor leading from the kitchen. The corridor itself was around ten yards in length, littered with large moving boxes and other sundry items not portable enough for the rebels to carry in their mad, hasty evacuation. The obstacle course had given Tyler enough cover for his own retreat, but it also slowed down the inexorable advance of the Shock Troopers.

A short burst of submachine gun fire, and two more Visitors fell. Tyler furrowed his brow as he noticed that, instead of having their numbers decimated with every alien soldier he killed, there were even _more _Shock Troopers bearing down on him. He crouched, found his targets quickly, then fired; he knew that the enemy had been expecting him to shoot while standing up. His volley transformed four onrushing troopers to bloody, twitching red-garbed corpses.

The Visitors changed tactics again. They stopped their pursuit and concentrated their fire at the edges of the doorway that served as their target's cover. The high-pitched whine of the Visitors' rifles were drowned out by the sounds of explosive laser impacts. Chunks of stucco, plaster and wood burst under the rain of electric laser blasts, sending suffocating clouds of dust and debris erupting in all directions. When the obstructive wafts of particles dissipated enough, the aliens advanced cautiously, looking at the hole that used to be the wall behind which their opponent had hidden. They expected to see a bloody, burnt out pile of dismembered human remains.

They found nothing.

Ham Tyler had dashed from the doorway to his next planned position, which was around the corner and to the left, into a recess in the wall out of the alien soldiers' view. Chris was crouched on the floor as he handed him the detonator. Tyler checked out the view to the corridor from his hiding place.

"Good luck, brother. I'm gone," Chris drawled. "I'll be at the rendezvous point waitin' for you."

Tyler nodded. He tensed, focusing and sharpening his senses, especially his hearing, and waited for the Shock Troopers to enter the gloom of the corridor.

A creak on a floorboard and a movement in the swirling dust cloud heralded the arrival of a cautious alien soldier. Tyler peeked carefully around the edge of the alcove. His hand wrapped around the detonator's twist handle trigger, caressing it. A grim smile creased his face as he saw two more Shock Troopers following the first one.

Tyler counted the steps the lead trooper cautiously took before he would twist the trigger.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

The game of hide-and-seek was almost over.

One.

The trigger clicked as Tyler twisted it. Explosions went off in sequence, pillars and walls buckled, and the roof of the dilapidated edifice from the middle to the back end of it came crashing down. Tyler closed his eyes and covered his nose and mouth as clouds of dust and debris and the acrid residue of explosives erupted all around him.

He waited for a few seconds more, until the ground no longer shook with the concussions of ceiling impacting with the floor, then stood up. Tyler carefully picked his way through the floor, sidestepping piles of debris, every step sending dust flying up in thick clouds from his soles. He crouched when he reached one of the piles of rubble, where he was sure one of the Visitors was standing when he triggered the explosions and brought the building down.

Tyler smiled with grim satisfaction when he saw the crushed remains of the alien soldier. The Shock Trooper's red uniform was torn in places, and his helmet had somehow been separated from his crumpled head. Green blood oozed from various places, and his green-black reptilian scales showed through shredded sections of his human-appearing synth-skin.

"Now that's a waste of good luggage," Tyler said, to no one in particular.

**VVVVV**

Brian flinched, his grip on Dan Pascal's arm tightening, as the explosions went off inside the sewer plant.

The field commander standing next to Brian was yelling into his comm link, trying to raise the assault squad leader at the other end. There was nothing but the crackle and pop of static coming from the receiver. Smoke and clouds of dust and debris belched from the mouth of the abandoned building and reached greedily for the sky.

A few Shock Troopers coated in green blood matted on their tattered red uniforms staggered out from the main doorway, coughing and wheezing from all the smoke and dust that they inhaled. The stragglers were lucky simply because most of their squad was deep inside the building in pursuit of the rebels. Several collapsed onto the ground as soon as they cleared the building.

The human police officers and the SWAT squad looked amongst themselves, scarcely believing what had just happened. Their orders were to support the Visitor assault squad and help with the arrest and capture of the rebel fighters. Now, they were simply witnesses to an incredible tactical error made by the Visitors.

The resistance had somehow transformed certain defeat into an improbable victory by turning their headquarters into a trap, the permanent resting place for many of the alien soldiers.

With a snarl, Brian spun Pascal around so that they faced each other. Frustration had twisted his handsome features into a grotesque mask. He didn't look forward to reporting this shocking failure to Steven and Diana, especially since his prisoner was now utterly useless. He drew his laser pistol and aimed it at Pascal's chest, then pulled the trigger.

With smoke and tiny tongues of searing flame erupting from his chest, Dan Pascal collapsed into the dust, a look of shock and pain forever frozen on his face.


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_And I, who was intent on watching it,_

_could make out muddied people in that slime,_

_all naked and their faces furious._

"Man, it sure reeks in here," complained Elias. He and six other rebels were assigned to guard the rear of the resistance's exodus from enemy pursuit. His comrades variously laughed or coughed or sighed in assent. "I don't know about y'all, but I could sure use some fresh air right now."

He tensed as he heard the faint echoes of footsteps from deeper within the tunnel. He and his companions ran as quietly as they could into the darkness, readying their weapons and taking covered positions within the few alcoves built into the tunnel walls. Elias raised his walkie-talkie to his lips. "Yo, Donovan, we've got something here. Standby."

Elias put the walkie-talkie into his rear pocket and waited. The echoes of footsteps got a little louder, and yellow beams from two flashlights played on the dingy tunnel walls. Elias held his breath and signaled his comrades to prepare to fire.

Suddenly, the flashlight beams disappeared. Elias blinked as the sewer tunnel was plunged into darkness. He tensed for action, his finger tightening around his M-16's trigger. He tried to pick up any auditory clues, but heard nothing but the pounding of his own heart. Elias' eyes strained to penetrate the gloom, but shadows upon shadows yielded nothing.

Then he got blinded by a super-bright bar of light aimed squarely at his face.

"Hold your fire!" Tyler's voice boomed. "And radio Gooder; tell him he's coming with me."

**VVVVV**

"That was pretty smart, Gooder, to leave a bunch of guys to guard your asses back in that tunnel," said Tyler, He and Donovan finished walking up the angled concrete incline that served as one of the banks of the so-called L.A. River, a valley of cement hundreds of miles long constructed to manage floods and sewage. They were on their way to the designated pick-up point in the Glendale Galleria's southwest parking structure, where the getaway vehicles supplied by Tyler's world network were parked. The rest of the rebels, meanwhile, waited inside the tunnel.

Tyler spoke again. "I never figured you to have any proper military instincts."

"Well, I did fly recon missions for the Air Force over the Gulf; that's how I first met you, remember?"

"Don't indulge in any illusions of grandeur. You're a photographer, Gooder, not a soldier. You don't have the instincts for war; the same goes for the rest of the amateurs in your outfit."

Tyler shook his head. "That might explain why your people didn't cut Chris and me to ribbons back there. We could hear them talking from a mile away inside that tunnel. I don't understand how you've all managed to stay alive all this time."

"I don't get you. Do you even know how ridiculous you sound sometimes? It's almost as if you wish Elias and the guys _did _shoot at you back there."

"You're missing the point," Tyler growled. "You people don't have the discipline or the ruthlessness to do what's necessary. You, especially."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"You and your people suffer from the same disease: You hesitate when you ought to act decisively." He led Donovan through some shrubs and low trees until they emerged next to the Colorado Boulevard off-ramp leading east towards Glendale. "Chris and I should have never needed to bring the house down on those lizards. You gave the enemy the chance to wipe you all out by waiting and doing nothing since last night, when your little lady friend didn't make it out."

"Unlike you, Tyler, I don't give up on people," said Donovan.

"I didn't say anything about giving up on people. All I'm saying is you have to be more practical, more realistic. You gotta do what you need to do. Like I said earlier, you and your people have been nothing but lucky so far. You can't count on that forever."

Donovan held his tongue as they continued walking east towards Glendale. The gloom of nightfall was fast approaching, and with that the Visitor-imposed curfew. He and Tyler traveled the final quarter of a mile through the alleys behind and between buildings.

When the Glendale Galleria's southwestern parking structure came into view, Tyler yanked on Donovan's arm, making the ex-cameraman stop in his tracks. "What?"

"Wait." Tyler grabbed a walkie-talkie from inside his leather jacket. "Arab to Camel Train. Arab to Camel Train."

A second's pause, then came a static-crackled reply. "Camel Train, 10-8. What's your 20, over."

"10-20 at Sahara point, over."

"10-4. Standby for pickup, over."

"10-4. Standing by. Arab out. Here," said Tyler as he tossed the walkie-talkie to Donovan. "Call your people up; tell them to get the first shift ready to move out. We'll be picking them up in about seven minutes. We've got five vehicles to fill up with people and materiel."

Tyler noticed that Donovan had a perplexed, yet almost amused, look on his face. "What?"

"'Arab'?"

"'Lawrence of Arabia' was too long, and I always hated the name 'Larry.'"

Donovan almost dropped the walkie-talkie. He shook from the effort it took to control himself.

"Pretty shitty, Donovan," said Tyler. "Got no reverence for a classic."

For the first time in several days, Mike Donovan laughed out loud.

**VVVVV**

"I take it, John, that you'll be leaving for Washington, D.C. in the morning?" Diana asked cordially. She and the Supreme Commander were walking down a hallway aboard the Mother Ship.

John grumbled. "My trip here has been nothing but a big disaster."

"Unfortunately, yes." She and John stopped at one of the doors to their right. "You can thank Steven for this state of affairs. His incompetence in dealing with the rebels will eventually undo everything we've worked for. Victory will continue to elude us as long as he's allowed to stay on the job."

"Unnecessary polemics."

"Hardly," Diana said as she opened the door and led the Supreme Commander into an antechamber. "Just consider the bald facts: First you have the disaster at the Medical Center; then you have the fiasco at the rebel headquarters yesterday afternoon. Didn't Steven boast he held the key to the rebels' destruction? What was it he said?" she asked rhetorically. "Ah yes. Something about 'exterminating the rebel vermin,' that 'they'll be a memory within hours.' Instead, all he has to show for the surprise attack is yet another defeat."

"Our technological advantage should have been more than sufficient to defeat these rebels."

Diana laughed shortly. "Surely you don't really believe that, do you? It takes more than mere technology to defeat a determined enemy. Much more." She looked at John with an intensity that blazed through her human-looking contact lenses. "It takes willpower, a resolute attitude that nothing can stand in your way. This country's history proves that very point. Their so-called 'Vietnam War' exemplifies the folly of depending entirely on a technological advantage."

"What can be done about the rebels, then?"

"Thus far, they've proven themselves to be resilient, resourceful, and incredibly lucky. However, such qualities are never absolute nor infinite in supply." Diana turned towards a door opposite the entrance into the antechamber, and John followed her. "Don't worry about the rebels. I have the key to their destruction."

"I hope this is not another wild boast. I've had enough of such things to last a lifetime."

"Boasts are the preserve of the ineffective… like Steven." Diana smiled sweetly at John. "When I say I will do something, it always gets done."

"So far all I have is words, Diana. What proof do you offer?"

Diana opened the door, then stepped through into a dark room that hummed with the sound of hyperactive machinery. John followed her, squinting as his eyes turned towards a brightly-lit window inside the room.

"She is my proof," Diana answered, turning towards the window. Beyond it was yet another room, a little larger than the one she, John, and three other Visitors were presently in. Inside it, standing on a raised octagonal platform surrounded by walls and panels of lights, was Juliet Parrish. "I'm sure that she is the leader of the rebels."

"_She's_ their leader? All this time I'd been led to believe it was Donovan."

"A mistaken assumption. The Medical Center fiasco proved that this young woman, one Juliet Parrish, leads the local rebel underground."

"How can you be so certain?"

"It's quite simple, really. No lackey would have dared to unmask you in front of a global television audience, John." Diana said. "Only someone with exceptional qualities would even contemplate such an act of significance, much less actually do it. The weight of responsibility would have crushed an ordinary person."

John felt the squeeze of anger and humiliation as he remembered the woman on the other side of the window unmasking him. "So this is the little woman who made this great war."

Diana looked at him, a small smile on her face. "I'm impressed, John. I didn't know you were knowledgeable of Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher-Stowe."

John kept his eyes on Julie. "Security had advised me that she was taken prisoner the same night as our original broadcast. I assumed that she would be interrogated, then eliminated. Why waste the resources to keep her in indefinite custody?"

Diana shook her head. "Is that the limit of your imagination? Why throw away a winning hand, when you should use it to win?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. It seems to me that she is only useful to us as a source of information."

"Information, my dear John, can be rendered obsolete. Indeed, she did confirm the location of her group's headquarters under interrogation, thereby turning the information we extracted from the counterfeiter Pascal into viable intelligence. As soon as she corroborated Pascal's confession using my latest truth serum, Brian was dispatched to take care of the rebels. But we now know what happened." Diana looked at the array of monitors in the room, then turned back to John. "We must give these humans more credit. To perpetually underestimate them will be our undoing. The rebels escaped from our attack on their headquarters because Brian and his assault squad underestimated their resourcefulness. Unfortunately, we now we have no leads as to their present whereabouts. However, the game is not lost, not while we have her in our power."

"You plan to convert her."

"Yes. I was actually hoping that she could be even more useful to us, but in another area: I had her genetics tested for compatibility for some reproductive experiments I want to recreate. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that she can't be used for those experiments."

"Isn't this rather pointless, given that we don't know where the rebels are now? I fail to see the benefit in expending all the effort and time necessary to convert this girl."

Diana shook her head. "With all due respect, John, your shortsightedness is baffling. She has already proved valuable in the very short term when my staff interrogated her, but her greatest value is yet to be realized." She turned to look at the naked young woman on the other side of the window. "The rebels will eventually emerge from their new headquarters, and we will have an opportunity then to plant her among them. Once she is back amongst her people we can then use her however we wish."

John scratched his chin, then nodded. "Your strategy seems sound. All I can say is I am expecting results from this project."

"I expect nothing less than absolute success."

John stayed silent, watching Diana and her staff working at their consoles. "What are you and your staff doing to her now?"

"This is what we call the elicitation stage. My specialists are establishing baseline responses to certain stimuli and collecting data, as well as testing the integrity of the several cerebral interface implants that connect the subject and the conversion chamber itself. After this, we will proceed with building her psychological profile through deep-level interrogation. She can hide no secrets from me."

"You've tried to educate me on your conversion process before; it just seems so complicated –"

Diana barely suppressed a derisive laugh. "Conversion _is_ complicated. There's nothing straightforward when you're dealing with something with an intelligence; willpower is not just an abstract concept."

"But your machine, your techniques, they are successful more often than not, yes? Are you now hedging your chances, Diana? Do you doubt your ability to successfully convert her?"

Diana turned to face John again. "She _will_ be converted, my dear John. I _guarantee_ that."

John rubbed his chin. "Despite my ignorance of the specifics of your conversion process, I've seen enough proof to know that you can deliver. I know of your successes with the leading political figures here in Los Angeles, including the mayor, the chief of police, and the entire City Council. And most recently, Corley Walker was a convincing demonstration of your talents."

Diana smiled. "Oh yes. Doctor Walker promised to be a formidable subject, but proved quite disappointing. Converting him was astoundingly easy."

"Do you think converting this girl leading the rebels will prove to be a problem?"

Diana ambled towards the door out of the conversion chamber. "My instincts tell me she's going to be very difficult, and converting her will take time. However," she smiled, "I've always thrived on challenges."

"Indeed," said John. "I'm sure you'll continue to be successful."

"Unquestionably. I've worked constantly on further improving the conversion chamber and refining the process." She keyed the door open and led John out into the antechamber. "I _will_ break her. She is going to be my masterpiece."

John smiled graciously as they continued towards the exit back into the hallway. "Your hard work and diligence will surely pay off. I'll expect a glowing report."

Diana bowed her head formally in salute. "Have a good trip back to Washington in the morning, John. And don't worry so much."

She paused to smile sweetly at him.

"Too much of that can kill you."


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

_Hence, if the present world go astray, _

_the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought._

This is what Michael Donovan feels, right now:

Your heart is pounding. You can feel it in your ears, it's pounding so hard. You feel a bit dizzy, a bit nauseous from the odors wafting in the air.

You're in the Mother Ship's gigantic storage section, where thousands upon thousands of people are stored like sides of beef after being taken by the Visitors. Thousands upon thousands, in suspended animation, encased in coffin-like enclosures filled with a gel-like substance.

_Most of these people... food for the Visitors... _

_And Sean is in here... somewhere. _The mere thought revolts you, and you barely stop yourself from vomiting right then and there.

You take a couple of deep breaths to compose yourself.

_I'm gonna find him, no matter what it takes._

So you begin your quest to find him.

You start to systematically search this massive section of the Mother Ship. You remember what you once called it when speaking to Sean's best friend, Josh Brooks, that day you found him all alone in San Pedro.

_The belly of the whale. _

_Absolutely._

You look into each and every container, trying to see through the semi-darkness and the translucent gel enveloping the poor person inside.

_All these people... How am I gonna find him?_

_Height... relative body shape and size... diffused spots of color at either the top or at the bottom... must be their hair..._

That's all you can see.

_But I can't give up. I _won't _give up._

So you search, feeling a bit like a ghoul amongst the dead.

_Perish the thought. He's _not _dead. They've just put him asleep, that's all. _

_And I've got to find him._

And so you search for Sean. You try to drown the frustration welling up inside you.

After some time, you come amongst a group of containers a little smaller than the others you'd been looking through.

_Children._

_The Visitors are gonna have these poor kids for dinner. _

You start feeling a little desperate. Quite naturally, too, because of the enormity of horror in front of you. You've got to find Sean and get him off this ship.

_But what if they've already gotten to him, and..._

_NO._

The thought is too much to bear. You lean up against the container in front of you, needing support for your suddenly-wobbly legs, when something makes you look up.

_Sean..._

There's no mistaking it. You recognize the brown hair, and he's about the same size as when you saw him last so many months ago. His eyes are closed, but even through the diffusing effect of the gel and the transparent container, it's as if you're looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of a young version of yourself..

_Gotta find something that'll break through that glass._

You look around you, and you find a heavy metal rod lying on the floor. Like a slugger at the plate, you step into position and swing with all your might. The rod shakes in your hand, but the container hasn't broken.

So you swing again, harder.

And you swing again, concentrating on a point just below where Sean's neck is. You swing again and again, hitting the container at approximately the same spot each time.

_Damn. Forearms are cramping up._

_But I can't stop. I _won't _stop._

The container starts to spider-web at the spot you're hitting.

_We're getting somewhere. Can't give up now._

So you keep on hitting the container.

Finally the spider web fissures open up, and the container cracks. The gel inside leaks out slowly. One last mighty swing of the rod smashes the container, and the gel gushes out of the opening.

The floor clangs as you drop the metal rod and rush to catch Sean as he starts to slump forward. You don't care about the slimy gel getting on your clothes as you to pull your son out from the broken container.

Sean groans, the first sign of life that emanates from him, as you take your jacket off and drape it on top of him. He then starts coughing, spitting out amounts of the gel as he starts to once again breathe on his own.

"_Sean... it's gonna be alright, son. It's gonna be alright."_

He blinks, then squints, then mutters, _"Dad-"_

You indulge in a brief embrace, then a desperate urge comes over you. _"Can you get up, son? We have to get out of here."_

Sean nods, and he starts to get up slowly. You make him wear the jacket and you pick him up and sling him over your shoulders in a fireman's carry. _"We're going home."_.

With Sean on your shoulders you walk briskly out of the storage section. You try to just stare straight ahead, not looking at the countless rows and columns of people in their dreamless, death-like sleep.

_You can't save them all._

You make your way from the dark, dingy underbelly of the Mother Ship into the more brightly-lit white hallways of the "public" section. This is the part most people who have seen footage of the Mother Ship are familiar with.

_I guess it's only natural for the Visitors to wear their disguises; even their ships have two faces to them._

Something bothers you, though, as you look down one of the hallways.

_How come there's no one around? _

Suddenly, you sense movement. Out of the corner of your eye you see shadows moving.

Then flashes of red and black.

And the impact of boot soles on the hallway's surface suddenly sends you hurtling down one of the hallways.

_Damn it._

_Shock Troopers!_

_Run for your life! _

_Run, damn it!_

Your grip on Sean tightens as you continue running. You chance a brief glance behind you.

Two of the pursuing Visitor soldiers have slowed down and assumed firing positions with their rifles.

To your perception, it seems as if everything has slowed right down, like time has warped and expanded so that seconds seem to take minutes.

_Everything's in slow-mo..._

Except for your heartbeat, which again is pounding hard, so much so that it feels like it's about to leap out of your chest.

Suddenly, you hear the familiar pulsing whine from a Visitor weapon, and you feel the intense heat from a super-concentrated packet of energy zing past your left side. Sparks fly on the wall where the blast hits, accompanied by a small explosion as matter disintegrates, when you hear another pulsing whine and see the bluish-white energy bolt flash by your right.

_They're firing on us!_

You try to run faster, but everything seems so slow. More shots flash by your flanks, funneling you and Sean into the middle of the hallway.

_I can't get us into any of these doorways in the halls._

Suddenly, agony explodes in your right foot, and you find yourself falling slowly, inexorably down onto the deck. You lose your grip on Sean, who rolls down your side, as you instinctively extend your arms in order to cushion your own fall.

_I'm hit._

The burning pain travels slowly up your shin, past your knee, through your thigh, then a final burst that makes you see nothing but whiteness. You blink, and you realize that you're still falling. You exhale raggedly when you finally impact the floor. A part of your mind registers the slight vibration when your son likewise completes his fall.

More vibrations now, which you realize are the hurried boot falls of the Visitor troops rushing to where you and Sean are now sprawled on the floor.

You try to see through the white haze of pain, but only see moving spots of red and black, along with a spot of tan and brown on the floor near where you are. You blink rapidly, and your vision improves somewhat.

Sean groans when one of the Visitor soldiers puts his boot on your son's neck to get him to lie on his back. Your son is too weak to resist. You try to crawl towards Sean when one of the troopers, whom you notice is a lot shorter and more lightly built, gestures to the others. Two of the soldiers grab you by the armpits and haul you up to a kneeling position.

The small soldier makes another gesture, and the trooper whose boot was on Sean's neck steps away. You blink rapidly, trying desperately to regain your vision, trying to see what's happening.

"_Sean!"_

"_Dad, help-"_

Raw panic seizes you as the small soldier raises the muzzle of his laser rifle in Sean's direction. You try to interpose yourself between him and the undersized trooper, but the two Visitors holding you only tighten their grip on you.

"_Say good-bye to your son, Donovan," _says the small trooper.

You cry out when you see Sean's chest erupt in a flash of electric fire. But, even as Sean is shot, a few things register in your mind:

_That trooper isn't a Visitor; her voice didn't vibrate._

_So she must be human._

_And she sounds so familiar._

"What's wrong, Donovan?" says the woman dressed in the Visitor Shock Trooper's uniform. "You think you know me, don't you?" She proceeds to remove the black helmet, along with the face plate covering her features.

You tense up when you recognize the soft, kind face and the curly blonde hair obscured by the trooper helmet. The coldness in the blue-green eyes, though, is something you never thought you'd ever see from this face.

"_Julie!" _You sob. _"You killed my son! But why?"_

Juliet Parrish raises the laser rifle, aiming for your forehead. _"Why, Donovan? Because you left me behind at the Medical Center! Because of what they've been doing to me for the last sixteen days." _You see tears tracing their way down her cheeks. _"Because I thought you loved me... but Diana showed me the truth."_

"_The truth..?"_

"_If you truly loved me, like I felt and thought that you did, you would've risked your life to save me."_

"_Julie-" _you start to plead.

"_Diana was right." _Julie's eyes turn into angry slits. _"So much for love."_

And the last thing you see is a blinding blue-white flash.

**VVVVV**

You wake up from the nightmare, soaking in sweat, your heart racing. You pull in a couple of really deep breaths, then sit up on the cot, groaning from the effort.

_Damn. Has it really been sixteen days since we lost Julie?_

_It's all my fault. I never should have left her at the hospital. _

You hold you head in your hands, trying to stay afloat in the ocean of guilt that's threatening to engulf you. _I've been having this nightmare ever since she's been gone. And all I've been able to discover about what's happening to her is what Tyler's people have told us._

_Is she really being converted?_

_How can I trust that? How can I trust him?_

And if we get her back, should I trust her_? _Can _I trust her?_

_Fuck._


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_...within this ring of broken rocks,_

_he then began, there are three smaller circles;_

_like those that you are leaving, they range down._

_Those circles are all full of cursed spirits._

_I always knew you would be a challenge, my dear_, thought Diana. _I know, however, that as difficult as these past sixteen days have been for me and my crew, they have been much harder on you._

Sixteen days.

For the last sixteen days these same five people have been convening in this part of the Mother Ship, a laboratory which is actually two rooms in one. Four of these people are Visitors: Diana; the psychology expert Paul; his assistant Marla; and Bruce, the medical specialist. They occupy the darkened control room portion of this lab. Surrounded by hugely-powerful computers, monitors, and miniature 3-D projectors, they control almost everything that happens in the other part of the room.

And all by her lonesome, separated from the four Visitors by a wall dominated by a transparent partition through which she could be observed, is the lone human of these five, Juliet Parrish.

She had been in the conversion chamber for the last five hours or so, standing naked atop a raised platform in the middle of the room. For the first three hours she had been deep in a delirious, trance-like state induced by a cocktail of psychoactive drugs coursing throughout her body.

Julie has never been aware of it, but during her first hours of each session in the conversion chamber Diana has been interrogating her, asking her about her own history. Because of the drugs in her system, one of which is a truth serum, she has never had any inclination to respond to those questions with anything but absolute honesty.

She never remembers anything from this part of her time here. This is how Diana's drugs work; the conversion subject cannot defend herself against something she is oblivious to.

This is the easy part of the conversion process.

Unfortunately for Julie, though, she remembers almost everything else. Memories of the ultra-vivid hallucinations forced onto her consciousness by the Visitors and their machines assault her without mercy in her moments alone. When she is in her holding cell, with nothing else to occupy her mind, Julie relives every physical sensation, every emotion, that is forcibly made to come to life in the conversion chamber.

In her lucid moments the crushing weight of self-doubt that Diana exposed and amplified during her earliest sessions in the conversion chamber is a constant companion. From the resistance group's earliest days Julie had felt inadequate, unfit to be in charge. Yet she took on the burden simply because nobody else would. The mantle of leadership is something she never willingly sought; Diana made her hate the way the weight of that responsibility felt on her shoulders more than she ever did before she was captured.

Because of Diana, Julie gradually developed a bitter resentment for her role as leader of the resistance movement and, by extension, for her comrades as well. But this resentment was far from enough to make her betray them. Nevertheless, Diana continually reinforced such feelings in her prisoner.

Even more effective than exploiting Julie's self-doubt was amplifying her latent guilt over all the lives that had been lost during the months of warfare. This burden was heavier to bear by far; it contradicted her fundamental reverence for life, exemplified as it was in her training to be a physician. She kept seeing friends and acquaintances get killed before her very eyes, all of them dying many different ways; Julie couldn't even remember exactly how their real deaths happened. Sometimes Diana would even make her believe she was swimming in pools of their innocent blood. The ghosts of such people – Robert Maxwell's wife Kathleen, killed during the attack on the rebels' mountain camp several months ago; Fred King, his face charred to ash with a Visitor weapon while he and Julie attempted to escape from the Medical Center just a couple of weeks ago; and Ben Taylor, Caleb's son and Elias' brother and one of her own closest friends, the first martyr in the war against the Visitors – all appeared in those visions, alternately dying over and over again and accusing her of being responsible for their violent deaths. Guilt crushed Julie's spirit like a mountain would an ant, and it was yet another thing that Diana always kept fresh in her mind.

Indeed, with every session in the conversion chamber, Diana managed to chip away at Julie's stubborn resistance to her methods. Though progress was painfully slow, it was still progress.

And it was very painful for Julie.

In the course of the tortures of the conversion process, Diana and her crew discovered that Julie had a congenital heart condition. Her ailment imposed physical limits on the harshness of the treatment she could be given. Julie's physiological flaw slowed down Diana's progress even more.

But tonight, she decided that the time had come to shed the restraints she and her crew had placed upon themselves. Diana had come to the conclusion that, for her to win in what amounted to a battle of wills between herself and her prisoner, she had to be far more aggressive than she had been. Her crew, Bruce specifically, warned her of the dangers Julie faced if Diana proceeded the way she wanted to.

"To succeed, one must dare to take risks," she told Bruce at the time.

"She is of no use to you dead," he warned.

Diana dismissed his warning, saying, "I will not allow her physical limitations dictate our strategy and tactics against her." She added, with steely conviction, "She will be converted."

Her interrogation of Julie tonight dug even deeper into the human's mental storehouse where she kept her deepest secrets. Not having found the answers she was looking for, Diana reviewed all the preliminary research they had done on Julie based on the collection of records available. She decided to explore the police report Julie's parents had filed when she was a six-year old: She was the victim of a sexual assault perpetrated by a relative. With that as her starting point, Diana started to explore how the traumatic event detailed in the report affected Julie's life.

Diana wasn't surprised at all that it had had a fairly profound effect, and that it significantly shaped Julie's personality. As a child she was a naturally introverted girl, but her traumatic experience caused her to become even more so. Over time, and with a lot of help, she gradually learned to overcome the worst effects of the incident, but they never really went away. She had issues trusting strangers and making friends, and although she eventually learned and accepted that not all men were like the relative who molested and abused her, she still had difficulties with intimacy. More often than not, her relationships with her few boyfriends tended to be unhappy ones.

Still, Diana was intrigued with Julie's history. _It's amazing, really, that she has actually assumed leadership of her group, composed as it is largely of men,_ Diana thought. _I suppose it's a testament to the courage and bravery that is at her core._

The more Diana interrogated Julie, the more she studied her, the more Diana understood just how to attack her.

_If__ there is one essential truth __about__ you, Julie, that I have discovered, it's that you wear a mask. A mask to hide your true self. A mask to hide your weakness. _

_A mask to hide your fears._

_And just as you exposed John's true face to the world, I __do__ the same to you. __I have exposed the truth about you, a truth that you have hidden from even yourself, and have forced you to __confront your most secret monster__._

_And that monster is _thetruth_._

The truth_ is, you are a _victim_. _

_A weak, pathetic, powerless victim._

And as Julie screamed in terror, deep in yet another hellish fantasy inside the conversion chamber, Diana just watched impassively, knowing that, finally, she had found the correct weakness to exploit at last.

**VVVVV**

This is Diana:

She is the commander of the Los Angeles Mother Ship. John's second-in-command. She thinks she deserves to be the Supreme Commander of the fleet sent to conquer Earth, but for now she is content to toil in the background.

For now.

Her sights are fixed on even higher aspirations.

Aside from this, she is an experienced warrior. Her record of victories – kills, actually – during her time in the military academy is a testament not only to her hand-to-hand combat skills, but also to her instinctive ruthlessness. The military masters overlooked the fact that she effectively murdered several of her rivals at the Academy in their contests of physical superiority. It is this absolute lack of mercy which made her stand out amongst her peers, and she is still remembered with admiration for it.

She is the Chief Science Officer of the expeditionary invasion fleet deployed to Earth. Peerless as a scientist and engineer, she has a strong mastery of biology, psychology, xenology and xenobiology, chemistry, and astrophysics. Her academic career is still celebrated on the homeworld as an example of the pinnacle of scholastic achievement, particularly in the sciences.

She is also the Leader's favorite consort. Indeed, her position and rank in the hierarchy of Visitor society owe as much to her physical beauty as to her unique abilities and raw intelligence.

Diana is ambitious, powerful, exceedingly intelligent and talented in many diverse ways, and beautiful. She represents the best of what her people can be.

But as prodigious as her native talents and abilities and beauty are, they don't constitute all of who and what she is.

Perhaps above all else, Diana is a creature of passion. Her heart is a furnace fueled by raw emotion, the fires of which are barely held in check by her training as a scientist and by a healthy respect for logic. When inspired by the right cause, she gives the entirety of her being in service to that cause. People who know her only superficially never see this side of her. They can only appreciate Diana for the coldness of her mind. For those who truly understand her, though, they recognize just how dangerous Diana can be when she feels very strongly about something.

It is this part of her that catapulted her to where she is today.

It happened not long after the Leader came to power. By virtue of her superior achievements in the Academy, Diana easily secured a place within the Leader's administration's science and technology ministry. In truth, she had no shortage of opportunities in the new regime. Her talents and her beauty opened many doors for her, and she had her pick. She simply opted to operate in an area where her talents would serve her best.

To her, it was clearly the most logical choice.

Soon after establishing himself, the Leader disclosed to his closest followers that he had to solve a few critical problems.

One of the foremost of these lit a fire to Diana's passion: How to eliminate the Leader's enemies – in effect _her_ enemies, given her devotion to his cause and philosophies – not by destroying them, but by turning them into exploitable assets.

The eventual solution: The conversion process.

It appealed to her because she saw it for what it was: It was a way to directly subjugate a person. Conversion was as pure an expression as there was for having power over someone else.

And if there was anything for which Diana was most passionate, it was for power.

She wasn't a member of the original team tasked with designing and realizing the project that eventually became the conversion chamber. But when she heard about it from one of her former masters at the Academy who also happened to be on the team, she used her assets – her mind, her charm, and her beauty – to gain a place on the team. Very soon she gained respect from her more senior colleagues for her inventiveness and penchant for finding solutions. Her growing list of achievements on the project ensured that her name was constantly spoken into the Leader's ear.

It didn't hurt that he found her sexually irresistible. Calculating that cultivating the Leader's personal interest might eventually parlay itself into more fruitful opportunities in the future, she reciprocated the Leader's interest in her.

It wasn't too long before the Leader pronounced that Diana had earned the privilege of being the designated overseer in charge of the entire project.

The Leader's decision paid immediate dividends. Diana's creativity found solutions where most thought only problems existed; her mastery in various sciences led her in directions most of her colleagues didn't even think of exploring; her determination to come up with a practical, workable solution to the problems of tapping the minds of sentient beings and effecting profound changes in attitude, even complete reversals in value systems, saw her team design and build the first conversion chamber prototype.

She had no compunction, no reluctance whatsoever, in testing the new machine on the Leader's enemies. She didn't care when the first victims of her new creation died because the first attempts at running the process simply converted fully-functional minds into melted cellular mush.

It only meant that she and her team had to work harder to succeed.

Through painstaking experimentation and development, Diana and her team gradually refined their machine and their usage of it. Over a period of a few years they worked in secrecy, reporting to the Leader directly, keeping him apprised on their steady progress.

Thanks to the Leader's increasingly totalitarian rule, there was no shortage of people on which to test the evolving project. The Leader imprisoned his political enemies and handed them over to Diana. It was only a matter of time before several of the Leader's staunchest opponents began professing support for his regime instead of continuing to voice their protests against his government.

The success of the conversion chamber project solidified her place as one of the foremost scientists and engineers in the Leader's administration. Thus, when the homeworld's dire environmental crisis deteriorated to a near-catastrophic level, the Leader decreed that his people's survival depended on them finding a new world to conquer and eventually resettle. After a thorough search, the ruling council had found a new world to plunder and colonize: Earth. Thus Diana found herself appointed as the expeditionary fleet's Chief Science Officer and second-in-command despite her relative youth and inexperience in military operations.

The Leader's plan was for his people to abandon the homeworld completely and move to Earth. In the meantime, the expeditionary fleet was also tasked with alleviating some existing basic shortages: Food and water were scarce now, but Earth was a rich source for both. Stealing Earth's water supplies augmented what the Visitors were already doing, mining water from moons and comets. Diana felt much enthusiasm for the Leader's plan, even though it would take at least a couple of generations to see it through to completion.

From the very beginning, a key part of the Leader's strategy of taking Earth entailed using Diana's conversion process on individuals of critical importance and influence. It was a way of minimizing the use of actual military resources: The Leader saw it as creating, and then exploiting, a path of least resistance. Diana, of course, supported the Leader's decision and praised him for its irrefutable logic.

Advance scouts monitored Earth surreptitiously as well as secured test subjects for the conversion process a few years before the fleet suddenly appeared over fifty of the planet's most important cities. Diana and her specialists recalibrated the conversion chambers – at least one was installed in each Mother Ship – to work on humans, and they worked until the process was reasonably effective.

The acid test was shortly before the actual invasion of Earth, when Diana's people kidnapped the United Nations' Secretary-General, Olav Lindstrom. His successful conversion not only made the Visitors' initial contact with the people of Earth much simpler, it also validated the process as a viable element in the strategy for conquest.

Over the next few months, Diana and her conversion specialists around the world worked on several dozens of humans in positions of power and influence. First to be converted were strategically essential political figures all around the world; next were a number of prominent and influential scientists. Diana and other key strategists had identified these people as potentially the most dangerous threats to the invasion since they could conceivably uncover the Visitors' secrets, specifically their true nature as reptilian humanoid beings.

Not all who were designated for conversion wound up converted. In fact, there were more failures than actual successes. Just as things were on the homeworld during the nascent days of the project, too many subjects either died or suffered irreparable brain damage as a result of undergoing the process. Nevertheless, conversion as applied to humans was still considered a successful enterprise.

After all, the Visitors now controlled the Earth, for all intents and purposes.

Despite this, rebellious humans banded together and fought to oppose the invasion. It annoyed Diana that the rebels in her own domain of Los Angeles were especially active and bothersome. That Steven seemed too incompetent to eliminate them annoyed her even more.

Unfortunately, the raid on the Los Angeles Medical Center caused her the most consternation by far. The ease and precision with which the rebels took control of the situation frankly frightened Diana. It wasn't that she feared for her life; she had faced death several time before during her combat trials.

No, two things scared her. First, she had never seen the humans' apparent fearlessness despite overwhelming odds against them. They relied completely on sound planning, sharp execution, and the element of surprise at the hospital, therefore negating her forces' superiority in numbers and firepower. She had never seen anything like this with her own eyes before.

The other thing that scared Diana was the clear ineptitude of too many of her fellow officers. Steven's incompetence she took for granted; John's meek submission at the moment of truth, when the young woman leading the rebels shredded his synth-skin disguise in front of the cameras, exposed not just his true physical face to the people of Earth, but also his true face as an inadequate Supreme Commander. There was no way the Leader's plan could succeed with colleagues like these.

And this frightened Diana most of all.

Not only that, but exposing John on live international television was easily the boldest stroke yet in the war for control of the planet. Diana may have been a relative novice in military matters, but she was intelligent enough to understand that the humiliating incident at the hospital had nothing but bad consequences, especially if nothing was done immediately to counteract them.

The Medical Center fiasco ignited a nuclear flame within the furnace inside Diana's heart. The Leader's plan was under critical threat; the ultimate survival of her species had been seriously compromised.

As was her ultimate goal to someday be powerful enough to usurp the Leader.

This was intolerable.

Through sheer good fortune, her forces managed to capture the leader of the local resistance group, Juliet Parrish, the very same young woman who shredded John's disguise and exposed his real face to a global audience. After meeting her briefly just after her arrest, Diana decided the human needed "an attitude adjustment," as she put it.

She could have killed the human outright, but Diana recognized that Parrish was far more valuable alive than dead. Had she been ruled by just her passions, she would have issued the execution order immediately. She might have even ripped the human apart herself, then devoured the pieces. However, as she told John later, she realized that this was an opportunity to turn the rebel leader into a spy and then use her against her own people. There was no way she could pass this up.

There was an undeniable logic behind that decision.

The rebel leader had become the focus of most of Diana's energies. Converting Parrish dominated her thoughts almost to the point of total obsession.

Unfortunately for her, to now be the object of Diana's obsession meant suffering beyond anything she had ever experienced before.

**VVVVV**

Fear radiated out from inside the conversion chamber, and Julie Parrish was the star from which all that raw terror emanated.

And beyond the transparent partition that separated Julie from the control room, Diana basked in the heat of that fear. Her face betrayed nothing of the satisfaction – the thrill – she felt as she watched the human on the other side of the glass.

Diana saw Julie's fear in her face. It was obvious in the pallor of the human's skin, the tears streaming down her cheeks, her wide open eyes darting everywhere as if constantly searching for threats. She saw it in her body language: Julie slouched, her arms held tight against her body, her hands balled into fists. And she could hear the human's fear in the whimpering moans she made, and in the way she panted as she breathed.

More than anything, though, Diana could _feel_ Julie's fear. Quite literally, she felt the human's steadily-increasing terror; it was a raw, visceral feeling altogether distinct from anything she herself was experiencing. Diana could easily tell her own emotions from Julie's, even as they occurred concurrently.

Just as Julie had tiny transceiver units surgically implanted into her head shortly after she was taken aboard the Mother Ship, Diana had as well. Throughout the Visitor fleet, the officers in charge of conversion operations all had these transceivers implanted into them to facilitate a direct psychic link between themselves and the victims of the conversion process.

Diana focused, concentrating, trying to find a psychic pathway into Julie's mind. It was like tuning a radio to fix on a specific frequency. Although she could see a three-dimensional representation of Julie's hallucinations on a small projector to her right, she always preferred to see things from her conversion subjects' own perspective.

She didn't even flinch when she tuned into Julie's mind. Presently the human was wandering in the damp, stench-filled darkness of the sewer tunnels that used to serve as the rebels' headquarters. She could feel the sense of dread that Julie felt, because someone – or maybe a group of people, she really didn't know – was pursuing her with certain nasty intentions. Julie definitely didn't want to know what those intentions were.

Diana disconnected her psychic link with Julie, her finger finding the activation button for the microphone that projected her voice into the conversion chamber.

"Julie," she said, her voice soothing, seductive. "I want to help you. Let me help you out of this place." She wasn't surprised when Julie moaned and shook her head, a gesture of refusal. It seemed to be her automatic response to whenever Diana spoke to her.

"I know there is someone there who wants to hurt you."

Again Julie shook her head.

"Can you see him?"

Diana released the button on her microphone, focusing again and re-establishing the psychic link with Julie.

She heard what Julie heard.

"Julie," said a male voice, distorted somewhat, but dripping with a heavy malice and all the more frightening.

She felt the human's fear spike at the sound of her name being called out, and she saw her spin around in the darkness, trying to find both who had said her name with such dangerous intent as well as a way to escape.

"Julie," the voice said again, louder this time.

The human screamed, pressing her palms hard against the sides of her head in an attempt to drown the voice out.

"Let me help you out of there, Julie. Reach out to me and give me your hand.

"Or he's going to get you."

"No!" screamed the human, new tears tracing their way down her face. "No!"

"Her heart, Diana," cautioned Bruce in a low voice. "Arrhythmia is setting in, with BP crossing over to acute hypertensive."

"Keep going," said Diana. She fingered the activation button of her mic again.

"Julie, tell me what's happening. What's happening, Julie?"

Julie moved her arms as if she was pushing someone away. Her face was twisted with terror and disgust, and she screamed. "N... No! No! He's got me!" She screamed again. "They've got me!"

"What are they doing to you, Julie? What are they doing?"

The human didn't answer Diana directly, but her screams made it clear that whatever she was experiencing, it was horrid. Julie twisted her torso, her arms up and tight to protect her body and face. "Yes, yes," she cried, "I'm on my knees! I'm on my knees! Please, don't hurt me!"

"What are they doing, Julie?" Diana repeated. "What are they doing to you?"

"No," Julie said, her hands up and open by her shoulders. "They're holding me down... they're holding me down," she answered Diana, panic plain in her voice. "They want me to...

"No!"

Diana glanced down at the 3D projector, where it showed Julie surrounded by several men. Most of them either had their trousers bunched at their feet or opened. Julie was kneeling on the ground, her wrists held by a man standing behind her. The other men were tightening the circle around her.

"Can't you hear their laughter, Julie? They're laughing at you.

"Your friends are laughing at you.

"They don't respect you. They don't see you as their leader; you aren't their leader, Julie.

"You're nothing but a plaything to them."

Julie screamed as she thrashed her head from side to side. Her eyes were closed tight, but despite this she could see and feel everything Diana wanted her to feel. She felt fearful for her life, disgusted beyond description, not wanting to believe that what she was experiencing was real.

But it felt all too real to her.

What's more, a part of her was starting to believe that what Diana was saying – that her friends in the resistance didn't respect her, didn't see her as their leader, and only saw her as a toy in some sick, perverted game – was actually true.

Her perceptions of reality couldn't provide any evidence to the contrary, after all.

But the experience Diana was forcing her to have did carry a steep price.

"Diana, her vitals -" Bruce began to say.

"I know what I'm doing," Diana replied, waving him off. "Keep on going."

She continued watching Julie in the conversion chamber. The human was acting out the current hallucination: Several of her friends in the rebellion had surrounded her, holding her against her will and degrading her. Diana had awakened a secret fear from deep within her, and she was powerless to do anything, utterly unable to stop the horrible things being done to her.

"Dear God," Julie cried, "no! No! Please, stop!"

Diana waited, allowing the human to experience the hallucination for a couple of minutes. She knew that, insofar as Julie was concerned, the disgusting fantasy she was experiencing in her mind had become physical reality.

_The mind determines what is real, and what isn't._

She activated her mic again. "Let me help you, Julie. I can stop them from hurting you. Your so-called friends are hurting you. They're using you, Julie. This is what they've always wanted to do with you; this is what they've always wanted to do _to_ you."

_Rejection of the self. Yes. Finally, we're at the point where she begins to reject her self._

Diana was somewhat amazed, and hugely irritated, when Julie responded.

"No!

"This is a lie!" Julie screamed at the top of her lungs, making her chest ache. "This isn't happening! This isn't happening!" She gritted her teeth as she forced her arms down, shuddering with effort, until her hands touched the sides of her thighs. She bent her neck, looking down at her right hip where she saw the ugly burn scar she received from a Visitor weapon several months ago, on the day when the Visitors killed Ben Taylor. Seeing the indelible mark on her body yanked Julie from the alternate reality the conversion chamber imposed upon her mind.

"This never happened!," she cried. "This never happened to me!"

But despite her annoyance, Diana was prepared for this, immediately answering, "But what _really_ happened to you, Julie? What happened?"

The lights shining in the conversion chamber changed patterns again, and the human started to jerk and shake as a new fantasy started to rape her mind anew.

_You didn't believe the lie. _

_But even the worst lies are grounded on the truth._

She didn't have to watch the 3D projector, but Diana knew that Julie's mind had traveled back to a specific moment in time, to a memory she didn't care to remember, one that she had buried so deeply she thought she had purged it completely from her mind.

Diana's interrogation from hours ago had drawn out every detail of this hidden memory, though, and now the human was being forced to relive it anew.

Julie's perceptions were distorted: everything moved with an agonizing slowness that stretched time unbelievably. Each moment seemed to take minutes to happen.

With a gasp of recognition, Julie's consciousness was consumed with a new experience, one that felt all too familiar.

She was six years old again.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon, sunny, breezy, just comfortably warm.

Yet despite this, she felt anxious and tense.

She was on her way home from the neighborhood playground, where she had been playing with her friends Jennifer and Susie, a pair of twin sisters whose mother was a friend of Julie's mom. They were on a play date, and the twins' mom agreed to watch over little Julie and to take her home in the afternoon.

Somehow, though, Julie got separated from them. She panicked and left for home, which was just a couple of blocks away.

Despite her panic, she knew the route home, having walked it several times with either her mom or her dad, or with her friends' parents.

The route home passed by a couple of new houses undergoing construction. She was just about there when she heard someone behind her call her name.

"Julie."

She spun her head around and saw him.

She knew him, and she never liked him.

She never liked it when he looked at her. She always felt something was wrong whenever his eyes were on her.

She never liked it when he said her name.

She never liked it when she had to hug him.

And so she ran.

He chased her.

She ran into one of the new houses, running up the stairs and hiding in one of the unfinished closets in one of the unfinished bedrooms.

He ran after her, calling out her name.

"Julie," he said, now as he did back then. "Julie, come out where I can see you.

"I only want to play."

She kept herself as small as possible, as quiet as possible, as she felt his footsteps on the wood of the stairs. She heard and felt the soles of his shoes scrape and fall onto the floor of the hallway, and she almost gasped when she heard the creak of weight-bearing boards loud in her ears.

"Oh no," she thought, now as she did back then. "He's in the room."

Now, as she did back then, she thought about making a run for it. She thought, now as she did back then, about whether she might be safer if she just stayed where she was.

"Maybe he won't find me."

She didn't know what to do, so she did nothing.

Now, as it did back then, her bladder felt like it was about to burst. The anxiety was drowning her, and she was paralyzed by fear. As the seconds ticked away, the pressure she felt just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Just like the shadow he cast as he walked past her hiding place.

"Julie..."

The sound of his voice filled her ears, and the malice she felt upon hearing it was the final bit of pressure that overwhelmed her control.

Now, as she did then, she couldn't hold on, and she let go. She was so shocked that she did so, she gasped.

And that, now, as it was back then, was how he found her.

He turned around and looked in the closet where she had rolled herself into a ball. She looked up at him – he seemed so gigantic – and blushed when he laughed at her.

"You pissed yourself," he said, now as he did then.

He bent down, reaching eagerly for her. "Let's take those shorts off -"

She kicked his hands away, but this only made it easier to grab at her legs. He wrapped them around the crook of his elbow, freeing his hands while she screamed as she struggled to free herself. She felt his hands on her legs, then her hips. She screamed again.

The fury in his eyes frightened her then, and it frightened her now. He closed his hand, damp from the urine that soaked her shorts, around her mouth. "Shut up," he said quietly.

He started tugging at her shorts now, as he did then, and she tried to free herself from his hold. But he was so much bigger and stronger than her; she could do nothing but pant as she felt her wet clothing slide down her legs and off.

"Now we're going to play," he said, "and I'm going to make you feel so good, Julie."

Now as it did then, his hand was warm against her skin as he started to explore her. She was only six, and nobody had told her, but she knew that what he was doing was wrong.

Horribly, unspeakably wrong.

And because it was wrong, she tried to fight him.

But he only laughed at her, taunting her for her weakness. He pressed his size and strength advantage over her with ease. He was rough with her now as he was back then, using his fingers with devastating effect not so much on Julie's body, but on her psyche. And though she bled from the abuse he gave, that wasn't the wound that proved hard to heal.

Reliving that moment ripped open what had been a wound closed by time, by compassion, by Julie's own will to file that memory away so it would no longer hurt her.

And now, the tears that flowed down her cheeks felt like raw blood, warm and angry, to Julie. The ache she felt between her legs matched the pain in her heart, which beat so furiously that sometimes it skipped out of rhythm. Her lungs burned from oxygen deprivation, just like the parts of her body that he touched and invaded without permission.

Diana knew all this, sensing everything through her psychic link with Julie.

_This is all so necessary, my dear, because you wouldn't quite believe the lies that you somehow are still able to see through._

_The _truth_ will be what will break you._

She activated her mic again.

"Julie," she said, with a perfect simulation of compassion in her voice, "it's over now. It's over now, Julie. Reach out to me; I can help you. Let me help you, Julie.

"If you don't, he will hurt you again. He can hurt you again, worse than ever before.

"Reach out to me, Julie. Let me help you."

She watched as the human, slowly and inexorably, started to reach out to her with her left arm. Julie stretched out her left hand...

... until she screamed again, realizing what she was doing.

"No!"

She pulled her left arm with her right, scratching her own skin, again trying to hurt herself so that the pain would anchor her to the present moment. She put the back of her right hand into her mouth and bit down, hard enough to make herself bleed.

_Damn you_, Diana thought. _I almost broke you._

Bruce interrupted her reverie again. "Cardiac arrhythmia is not subsiding; if anything, it's getting worse. And BP is entering into the super-critical range."

As ever, though, Diana ignored his warning. She spoke into her mic.

"Julie, what happened when you told your parents? What happened?"

The human shook her head, shutting her eyes and biting down on her hand again.

"What happened when you told your parents, Julie?"

Julie's eyes snapped open.

And she found herself in her mother's arms.

They were on a hospital bed, the sheets cool and comfortable. She clung tight to her mother, Gabrielle, whose face, so much like hers, was kindness itself. They both had hair the color of honey, and eyes that gleamed like the sea on a sunny day.

Gabrielle sat cross-legged on the bed with Julie, stroking her daughter's hair, still dirty from the dust and grime of the unfinished house. Because of what had happened to her, Julie needed to be examined first before she could be allowed to clean up.

"Tell me what happened, baby," she said to Julie with a gentle whisper. "We have to know what happened."

Julie buried her face into her mother's chest and sobbed. "I can't, momma! I'm too scared!"

Gabrielle kissed her on the top of her head and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "Be brave, honey," she said. "Be brave. You're a big girl now – six years old – and you've always been brave."

"Besides," she said, pointing to two other people in the room with them, "Daddy and Officer Williams are here. We're all here, honey, to make sure nobody hurts you."

Julie calmed down a bit, but when she started thinking about what had happened to her, she started to cry uncontrollably again. "I can't!" she said. "Just make him go away, please! I'm too scared!"

Gabrielle hugged her little daughter again, tighter than ever. She rocked her gently as she held her, kissing her on the top of her head now and again, just waiting for Julie to regain some semblance of composure.

"We'll wait until you're ready, Julie," Gabrielle whispered. "We'll wait until you feel brave enough again."

Now, as she did then, Julie felt her mother's love in her embrace. That love absorbed the pain and the shame that she felt that saturated her entire being. The ache in her heart seemed to expand beyond her chest, but in her mother's arms she felt some of her bravery return.

Diana listened to Julie's painful recollection to her parents, knowing that re-experiencing this traumatic memory multiple times, in several different ways, was violently reopening the same psychological wound over and over and over again.

_But perhaps worse is yet to come_, thought Diana_._

Julie was spent after reluctantly telling her parents and the police officer about what had happened to her. She hated having to relive that terror, that pain; a part of her hated that she was forced to even think about it and talk about it.

She just wanted to go home.

"But, sweetheart, we're not done yet," Gabrielle said.

"No, no, no!" Julie said as she wept. "I don't want to talk about it anymore!"

"We have to know, honey," said her father, Thomas. "We have to know who did this to you."

Julie sobbed. She saw his face in her mind's eye, and she grabbed at her mother desperately. "I can't," she said. "I can't."

Gabrielle held Julie's face in her hands and looked into her eyes. "You can," she said, gently yet firmly. She hugged the little girl protectively again. "We have to know, sweetie. We have to know."

Julie stayed silent for long moments, then said, with a pained whisper, "It was Uncle Frank -"

She felt her mother's embrace slacken; she felt her mother gasp. She heard her father slam the wall and curse, and she was frightened by the sudden burst of violence. She heard Officer Williams talk to her father in quiet, urgent tones, though she couldn't quite hear everything he said.

She did hear the police officer ask, "Who is Uncle Frank?"

And she heard her father's answer, pain and fury obvious in his voice: "That's Gabby's younger brother. He lives near us, just a couple of streets over."

"I can't believe it," Gabrielle whispered. "I can't believe it."

Julie heard her mother keep repeating those words – "I can't believe it" – and they felt like knives slicing into her.

"I can't believe it" felt so much like "I don't believe you" to Julie.

She felt it. She felt it in her mother's slackened embrace, in her gasp.

And this was the moment when Julie **truly** felt for the first time what it felt to be abandoned and left alone. Now, as she did then, Julie thought that her mother had chosen to believe the facade of goodness projected by her uncle, her mother's younger brother, over the painful honesty from her only child.

Now, as it did then, the emotional and psychological wound bled so profusely that to keep on feeling the pain of that wound would, both figuratively and literally, break her heart.

It didn't matter that she was wrong – no loving mother would ever stop loving her child – , but in the mind of a six year-old, what else was possible?

"Momma," she said weakly. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

All Julie heard, though, were her mother's sobs. Worse, still, was that she felt her mother's pain, the extent of which only made her own pain expand exponentially.

She was really feeling it in her chest, worse than ever before.

Julie felt a bit faint, so she shut her eyes, trying to somehow be numb to the agony she felt. When she opened her eyes again, she felt cold breezes sting her skin.

It was raining.

She and a group of people were gathered on a wet, wind-swept green hillside. She felt her little hand inside someone else's. She looked up and saw her daddy. He clung to her with one hand, holding a big black umbrella with the other.

His face looked so unspeakably, indescribably sad, and so she felt the same unspeakable, indescribable sadness too. She had never ever seen him cry, but he was crying now.

This made her cry, too.

But she'd been crying for hours now, and her head hurt.

She saw the black coffin now, and a priest under an umbrella. He was saying something, but somehow all she could hear were the sounds of weeping from the people around her.

Her father then squeezed her hand, and they walked towards the coffin now. The priest was still talking, but she still couldn't understand him. Then, slowly, his assistants now went to one end of the coffin and slowly lifted part of its lid.

Julie gasped when she saw her mother inside it.

She couldn't believe what she saw.

Her face, colorless, lifeless, still looked so much like hers. But now her eyes no longer gleamed like the sea, and her honey-colored hair looked more like dried straw.

Julie blinked, not wanting to believe what her eyes were telling her.

But this sight, more than anything else, made the already enormous pain she was feeling spike up to impossible levels.

She looked at the priest again, then at everyone in the crowd. They all looked back at her with eyes that accused her silently.

Nobody spoke.

But she heard voices in her head anyway.

_It's your fault, Julie._

_You broke your mother's heart._

_You are the reason why she is dead._

_It's your fault, Julie._

_You broke your mother's heart._

_You are the reason why she is dead._

The words repeated over and over, the accusatory mantra spoken into her mind by countless different voices.

All she could do was deny the accusation. "No, no," Julie said breathlessly.

But the accusations kept on coming, harder, louder, with more insistence and conviction with every passing second.

She looked down into the coffin again, and what she saw now horrified her far worse than ever before.

Trails of blood, angry red, flowed from her mother's eye sockets. Little maggots crawled in and out of her nostrils, and her mouth...

Her mouth moved.

Her mother's corpse, impossibly, started to speak.

"You did this to me.

"You **lied**. You lied to me; you lied to the world.

"I left you behind because you broke my heart.

"I'm **dead**; it's **your** fault."

Julie screamed, then covered her eyes with her hands.

"No! No!" she kept repeating breathlessly.

Then she looked at the back of her right hand, which hurt for some reason. She felt the trickle of something warm, then saw the trail of blood going down her hand and arm.

She screamed again when she saw the blood was, instead of red, a sickening green.

She felt the pulsating sensation of pain on her left arm, on the place where she had scratched her nails hard on her own skin.

And she saw the skin mangled and torn. That horrified her.

But what horrified her even more were the greenish-black reptilian scales shining underneath.

She tried to scream again, but somehow she couldn't.

She kept looking at the back of her hand, bleeding green, and the shredded skin of her arm, underneath which was a patch of scales.

Her chest hurt terribly, and she could feel the frenzied, strangely off-beat pounding of her heart inside her ears.

Her vision started to blur at the edges, with darkness inexorably encroaching on everything she could see. She felt her feet sliding, her knees buckling, her legs moving closer and closer to parallel to the floor.

By the time she hit the floor of the platform in the middle of the conversion chamber, Julie didn't feel anything at all.


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

_And even as one thought springs from another,_

_so out of that was still another born,_

_which made the fear I felt before redouble._

"Pretty out here, ain't it?"

Caleb Taylor looked around and took in the scenery. He and his son, Elias, were assigned to guard a portion of the perimeter of the new resistance hideout, which was a long-abandoned movie ranch. The two Taylors leaned up against a huge oak and enjoyed the shade afforded by the canopy. Caleb grimaced as he looked at the rising cloud of dust about a couple of hundred yards or so away.

"Sure is."

"Ain't nothing like our hood, though." Elias turned to look behind him, watching the frenzied activity of resistance fighters unloading the trucks and vans which carried caches of weapons, equipment, and supplies. "I'll tell you something, too: Boring as it is, guard duty's much better than lugging all that junk around and unpacking."

Caleb snorted. "I don't know 'bout that, son. I think I'd rather help unpack." He shrugged. "When you're bored like I am, the mind tends to do strange things and think strange thoughts."

"What are you talking about, Pop?"

"Things I'd rather not think about," Caleb said dolefully. He looked down at his dusty boots. "Am I the only one, or is anybody else in our outfit worried about Julie?"

Elias sighed, feeling more than a little guilty. He had been trying to avoid thinking about Julie for the last week and a half or so. "I'm sure we're all thinking about her, Pop," he finally said, after a few seconds searching for the right words to say.

"Have you been? Nobody even talks about her anymore, at least not as far as I can hear." Caleb's voice was anguished as he spoke. "It's almost as if everybody here thinks of her like she's dead... like your brother, Ben."

"She may as well be," said Ham Tyler, who stepped out from behind another particularly large oak. His scarred visage was expressionless, even when the Taylors whirled around and aimed their M-16s squarely at him. "Glad to see we put two of the best possible people on perimeter patrol. Good reaction time."

"Shut up," Elias said angrily. "At least we're doing something to help this group out. What about you, huh?"

"Me? What about me?"

"A lot of help you've been so far. Just tell me something: What happened to what you said to Donovan, huh? About you helping out in getting Julie back?"

"This isn't about me. Besides, if you knew what I know, you wouldn't be so quick to want her back."

"What are you talking about?" asked Elias.

"She's a casualty of war. Gooder's little lady friend is still alive, but it's useless to believe that, even if we get her back, she'll be worth the sacrifices and effort to get it done."

"This isn't a business transaction we're talking about here," Caleb interjected. "We're talking about a person. Julie's our leader, and a friend."

Tyler raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "You people are too sentimental. War doesn't stop when someone gets caught or killed; that's what happens when amateurs and wannabes do things only professionals are supposed to do. If one side stops or lets its guard down, even if its just for a moment, the other side's gonna eat him alive." His lips curled into a sardonic smile. "And you both know that that's not just a figure of speech."

"I don't care what you say," Elias said. "None of us have given up on Julie."

"And I suggest you do more to help us all out in getting her back," Caleb added.

"Oh, don't worry. It's like I told Gooder: We'll help you get her back." As usual, Tyler's face was inscrutable. "I just hope nobody makes the mistake of trusting her."

Elias was about to reply angrily when the shadow of the canopy became darker. He, Tyler and Caleb all walked from beneath the shade of the foliage and craned their necks skyward, wondering if some particularly dark thundercloud had suddenly obscured the sun.

Then the air started vibrating, and all of them saw it.

A gigantic Mother Ship glided effortlessly over them, a few miles above, on a southwest bearing towards downtown Los Angeles. At first they thought it was simply Diana's Mother Ship, but they instantly realized it was actually a totally different ship.

This one bore distinctive markings on its underside, as well as arrays of huge blisters and bumps that were not on Diana's otherwise similar ship. Caleb and Elias both took cover back under the foliage, as if that could somehow afford them safety and protection.

Tyler just looked up at it, mouth agape, but otherwise betraying no emotion. He continued watching its inexorable progress, until the unbelievably massive spacecraft moved enough so that it no longer cast its shadow on him and the Taylors.

Squinting with the sudden return of the early afternoon's full sunlight, Tyler walked towards the Taylors, rubbing his chin. "That ship's bigger than Diana's, it looks like. Maybe six or seven miles across, end to end."

"Damn," muttered Caleb. "Just what we need: More of those lizards to fight."

Tyler shrugged. "Looks like this war's gonna get a lot bigger and uglier real fast."

**VVVVV**

Diana finished her descent onto the deck of the hangar bay just as the Fleet Sector Commander's squad vehicle was completing its landing cycle. She hurried over to where Martin and his chief aide, Lorraine, were waiting at the shuttle's starboard side. Other officers from various areas of the Mother Ship were there as well. Diana composed herself quickly.

Pneumatic valves spit, and then the starboard hatch opened. When the landing ramp was fully lowered, gold-helmeted security guards from within the craft descended in pairs, until eight of them had arrayed themselves in two columns parallel to each other, flanking the hatch.

"What is Commander Pamela doing here?" Diana asked in hushed tones. "Why was I not informed of her approach earlier?"

"My apologies, Diana," began Lorraine, "but the Fleet Sector Commander's arrival here is completely unannounced."

"Her Mother Ship came in cloaked," Martin added, before stiffening his posture.

Diana turned to face forward, just in time to see a tall Visitor female begin her descent down the landing ramp. The tall female had three broad stripes extending down from her neck across the left pectoral of her uniform. Her adopted synth-skin features made her look like an extremely attractive Caucasian woman in her early forties. She had dark brown hair, medium length, wavy, styled to enhance the cool confidence reflected in her facial expression. Her gait was likewise sure and confident, just shy of arrogance, the walk of someone who had a long history of superb accomplishment. She looked athletic, with some of her muscles straining against the confines of the fabric of her uniform as she approached Diana and her officers.

Pamela smiled. "Hello, Diana." She spoke with an aristocratic English accent, and a hint of steel in her voice.

"Welcome, Commander."

"The Leader sends his greetings."

Diana felt flustered; she didn't expect Pamela's response. "I... I'm afraid that you've caught me by surprise. It disturbs me that I was not informed earlier of your arrival."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Diana. I hope I haven't thrown you off schedule."

Diana smiled gracefully. "No, no, I would have liked more time to prepare a reception for you... a reception befitting a Supreme Commander."

"Well, how very thoughtful of you." Pamela smiled back, then strode towards the metal stairs Diana had descended from just minutes earlier. She looked back at Diana and her lieutenants as she ascended. "The Leader wants the schedule sped up, and for that purpose I have brought engineers and other experts for a special project. If it succeeds, we'll be able to pump all the fresh water from Southern California in the next thirty days."

"I should have been left to handle that," Diana protested.

"Well, it could become a military issue, an area in which I am fairly well-versed."

"I'm aware of that," replied Diana, more shortly than she would have preferred to let on.

Pamela stopped her climb at the last landing prior to the catwalk suspended high above the hangar deck. She looked Diana squarely in the eye. "The resistance has been causing us some delays and, frankly, jeopardizing our mission. We were led to believe that the rebels in this area were disorganized and ineffective."

"Steven is the only one who has been ineffective in dealing with the rebels," Diana deadpanned. "However," she continued, a smug smile forming on her lips, "I have captured their leader, and I am-"

Pamela scoffed, shaking her head. "It's not important that we discuss that. What is important is that we do what we're told."

Diana's smile faltered, then turned into a venomous glare as Pamela turned around and finished her ascent onto the catwalk leading out of the hangar deck.

Behind them, Martin and Lorraine exchanged wordless glances.

**VVVVV**

"These disguises were a good idea," Mike Donovan said as he turned the steering wheel gently. "The black-and-white helps a lot, too. Not even the Visitors would look twice if they see an LAPD squad car during the middle of curfew."

"It's all about attention to detail, Gooder," mumbled Ham Tyler. "That, and not doing anything to attract attention to yourself."

"How did you manage to get us the car and the uniforms so quick, anyway?"

"I've got my sources."

"Helps to have friends in high places."

Ham looked around, scanning the area. "We ought to be real close."

"There." Mike pointed at a sign on the side of a building. "Crandall's Film Storage and Processing."

"The warehouse is out back."

Donovan drove the LAPD Crown Victoria into an alley, then found the warehouse's loading dock. He drove up to it and exited the car, straightening the fit of the black cap on his head.

"What's that for?" Tyler asked as he got out of the car himself.

"Attention to detail."

"Nice," Tyler snickered as he walked towards the back of the car. "I need the key to the trunk."

Donovan dug into his pants and tossed the car key at Tyler. "Grab me a Mag, too."

Ham opened the trunk. In the dimness he felt around for two long metal cylinders. He drew both out then slammed the trunk lid. "Think fast," he said as he tossed first the car key, then a foot-long black Mag-Lite, at Donovan.

Donovan almost dropped the heavy metal flashlight, impossible as it was to see in the darkness.

"Come on."

Mike and Ham walked cautiously into the warehouse through a side door, switching on their flashlights as the door closed. "Aim low, at the floor only, where there are windows around."

"What for?" Donovan asked.

"To make it harder for anyone outside to see us."

"Right." Mike had to smile to himself, admiring Tyler's thoroughness. "I have to admit, I didn't think of that."

"Don't remind me again about how your instincts suck, Gooder." Donovan was about to reply defensively, when Tyler cut him off. "Never mind what I just said; just lead the way."

Mike turned and led Tyler deeper into the dark warehouse. Even in the gloom they could see the shadowy outlines of the tall shelving units that were anchored to the floor of the edifice. The shelves were arrayed in columns and were stocked with boxes filled with film canisters. Donovan's course took them towards the middle of the array of shelves.

Tyler aimed his Mag-Lite at some of the shelves, then at the floor. A considerable layer of fine dust which covered everything testified to the derelict state of the warehouse.

"What is it with you and dumps, Gooder?" Tyler choked and coughed.

"What are you talking about?"

"Your outfit's last HQ was a sewer processing plant, for Chrissakes!"

"Hey, at least it's easy to tell nobody's been in here for quite some time."

"Next time we meet a contact, I'm making sure we go somewhere we can breathe easier." Tyler coughed again. "We there yet?"

Donovan stopped just short of the terminus of the pair of shelving units they had walked between. Just beyond was a space five feet wide, then the next rows and columns of shelving units began anew. "This is it," Mike said quietly.

Ham walked past Donovan into the open area between the shelves, then looked at his watch. "10:47," he muttered. "So where's your little gator friend?"

"Cool it with that talk. He's one of us."

"Gooder, you'll trust just about anyone. This whole setup stinks-"

Tyler froze in mid-sentence as he sensed movement from somewhere behind him. He whirled and saw a figure in the shadows walk out from behind one of the other rows of shelves. Ham swung his flashlight so that its beam illuminated the figure, who was clad entirely in a red-orange Visitor uniform.

The Visitor shielded his eyes from the intense light with his hand, until Tyler lowered his aim so that the Mag's beam was directed at the alien's torso instead.

"Just like a swamp gator," Tyler seethed. "Sneaks up on you every time."

"Martin," greeted Mike, extending his hand out to the Visitor.

Martin took it and shook, obviously familiar with the custom. His face, though, betrayed his wariness and annoyance with Donovan's companion. "Hello, Mike."

Despite the darkness, Donovan could tell that both Tyler and Martin were staring at each other, silently measuring and evaluating the other's potential. Mike smiled crookedly, moving his head in Tyler's direction slightly. "This... person is one of us. His name is Ham Tyler," he began. "I don't like him, but I trust him. I ask you to do the same."

Martin held Tyler's stare for a moment more, then looked at Donovan. "I trust you, Mike. That's enough."

Donovan smiled, somewhat amused by his companions' mutual enmity. Actually, now that he thought about it, Ham and Martin seemed to have much in common. Both were military men whose loyalty to the authority under which they each served was overpowered by their own personal convictions and morals. Both were well-versed in both the brutal, more martial aspects of being a soldier, as well as the nuanced, shadowy ways of intelligence operatives. They both had the ability to lead others, albeit without any perceptible need for the trappings of authority, and both possessed a resolute will to do whatever is necessary for his side to win.

_They're two like poles of a magnet_, Donovan mused. _Like repels like._

Mike shelved this line of thought quickly, though, as something more important came to mind. "How's Julie?"

Martin sighed. "She hasn't broken yet," he began, looking genuinely sad at Donovan, "but she will. I have an agent working really closely on this. He reports that Diana will either convert her or kill her in the attempt."

"What's makes you say that?" asked Tyler.

"Julie suffered a myocardial infarction during her last conversion session-"

"Myocardial infarction?" Mike interrupted.

"It means, Gooder, that your little lady friend had a heart attack." Tyler looked at Martin. "You think Diana really could kill her?"

"Julie is strong-willed and has been resourceful in resisting the conversion process to this point. But she has no hope of outlasting Diana and the conversion chamber." Martin sighed. "You would think that pushing Julie to the brink of death would make Diana stop trying. If anything, I'm sure this will only make Diana try harder, now that she's got another weakness to exploit."

Donovan grabbed Martin's arm. "We've got to get her out this. I've got a plan, but we need you and the other Fifth Columnists to help."

Martin shook his head. "I wish there was something I could do, Mike, but under the circumstances..."

"Look," Tyler interjected, "you do as the man tells you, or I'm going to turn you into an hors d'oeuvre."

"Are there many more like this one?" Martin asked.

Mike tried not to laugh. "Fortunately, selective breeding keeps their number to a minimum."

"All right," Martin said. "I'll listen. But I can promise nothing."

**VVVVV**

_Life's a bitch sometimes._

Donovan sighed as he walked slowly and quietly to his cot at resistance HQ. He stretched his back and neck, making the junctions between the vertebrae pop as he did so.

He opened the door and felt for the switch on the wall. He turned the light on and squinted into his wristwatch. "3:32," he muttered as he stretched again and yawned.

He was about to take his shirt off when he heard a soft knock on his door. He was mildly irritated at the surprise; he hadn't expected anyone to still be up at such a late hour, and he was exhausted after a full day and the marathon meeting with Martin. He wanted nothing more than to just sink into his little cot and try to catch an hour or two of sleep before sunrise, and the beginning of another hard day.

He smoothed his shirt on his chest and opened the door.

"Hi, Ruby," he said, his annoyance melting away instantly. "What's going on?"

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Donovan. I know it's late, but I had to come talk to you."

"No worries." Donovan smiled. "You wanna come in?"

"Only if you promise to relax. You look exhausted."

"That bad, huh?" He led Ruby into the small room, then collapsed onto his cot and massaged his neck. "So what's going on?"

Ruby sat at the foot of the cot. "So I take it that you and Mr. Tyler have a plan to save Julie in the works?"

He looked at Ruby. "Can I level with you?"

"I should hope so."

Donovan sighed. "Tyler is convinced that Julie is, as he calls it, 'damaged goods;' the sad thing is, based on what we've been told by people who know, there's a good chance he's right." He looked at Ruby, pain etched on his face. "If Diana's converted her, if there's any possibility of that at all, Tyler thinks she might be better off dead."

Ruby looked at him, mouth agape. He didn't trust himself to meet her gaze. "I don't like it any more than you do."

"Well, that's obviously the worst case scenario. What if she's not converted?"

"If she's not, we go with my plan to bring her home." Donovan stared blankly at a wall. "I just hope she can hold out for just a little longer."

Ruby was quiet for a moment, digesting everything he had told her. Then she spoke. "Mr. Donovan, don't feel guilty about Julie."

"I can't help it, Ruby."

"But it wasn't your fault. None of this is."

"I don't know about that." He summoned the last of his strength and sat up straight on his cot. "I left her there at the hospital. I should have gone back for her."

"You had no choice. I was there, remember?"

Mike sighed. "It took me forever to come up with a plan to spring her. We have to get her back. She's the only one cut out to be in charge of this outfit."

"Sometimes you just have to admit there are some things you can't control. One thing you have to remember, though: You'll always have friends around you, friends who want to help." She smiled at him. "Which is precisely the reason why I'm here, in fact."

"What do you mean?"

"I want to help getting Julie back. I mean, really help, not just be on the sidelines or here waiting and worrying for everyone to come back."

"I don't know, Ruby-"

"I'm not a helpless old woman, Mr. Donovan," she said indignantly.

"Please, please!" Donovan said, his hands raised in an exaggerated gesture of mock exasperation. "When are you going to call me Mike?" He started chuckling suddenly. "Everyone calls me 'Donovan' around here."

"Either that or 'Gooder'," Ruby laughed along with him. "I'll call you Mike under one condition: If you and Mr. Tyler let me help you get Julie back."

"I guess there's just no saying no to you." Donovan leaned back down onto his cot. "I'll talk to Tyler about it in the morning; I may not like it so much, but since you're insisting, we'll find some way to use you."

"Anything," Ruby said. "Just to get Julie back."

**VVVVV**

"So this is the leader of the rebels?" Pamela asked. She and Diana were looking at Juliet Parrish, who was curled up and hugging herself tightly as she slept inside her cell. Through the surveillance equipment built into cell they could hear her voice as she spoke in her restless sleep, vacillating between quiet, mostly incoherent whispers and choking sobs.

"Yes," Diana answered as she handed a portable data storage device to Pamela. "Her name is Julie Parrish. I captured her while she was trying to escape from the medical center after she and her group sabotaged John's announcement program."

"That was almost three weeks ago. You're not done with converting her yet after all this time?"

"As I've told John many times, conversion is a very complex, and often difficult, procedure." Diana swallowed her growing annoyance. "I assure you, no time has been wasted in my quest to convert her and turn her into a reliable asset."

Pamela watched Julie for a few moments more, then looked at the hand-held data storage unit. With swift and precise finger gestures she navigated the interface and accessed Diana's reports. After a few minutes of silence she smiled at Diana.

"Your account of your attempts to convert this woman makes for very interesting reading."

Diana allowed herself a small yet proud smile. "She is undoubtedly a challenge, but I anticipated that she would be. But as frustrating as converting her can occasionally be, the job has been uniquely satisfying and stimulating."

Pamela sighed, then arched an eyebrow. "Don't you think you are underestimating the enemy somewhat?"

"I don't follow."

"This woman has been in your custody for almost three weeks. Haven't you considered the possibility that her comrades have given up on her and considered her a casualty of war?"

"Of course I have-"

"Have you?" Pamela interrupted. "Haven't you ever considered the probability that, even if you successfully convert her-"

"If?" Diana bristled. "I have no doubt that I will convert her."

"Well, let me express, in no uncertain terms, that I have very serious reservations about the viability of your conversion process." Pamela smiled. "As I was saying, even if you convert her, haven't you thought about the likelihood that the rebels will be extremely suspicious of her in the event she returns to them? That they could never trust her ever again, simply because, by now, they probably know about what you've been doing to her?"

"I will make sure that she is programmed appropriately, after she has been broken." Diana did not look at Pamela, but rather fixed her gaze at Julie. "And I am at the verge of doing so."

"Don't take things so personally, my dear. It's just that I would rather kill the enemy; torture might satisfy a perverse personal sadism on your part, but it's rare when it effects a true change in a victim's personality."

Diana crossed her arms and smiled smugly. "Conversion may be torturous for the subject, but it is far beyond any simple torture. Moreover, I have no 'personal sadism' to satisfy... only the willingness to do all that is necessary to do the job. If you have read the entirety of the reports, then you wouldn't question the effectiveness of the conversion process."

"Oh, I have read the all of the reports," Pamela countered. "Even before I entered atmosphere in this system. As impressive as your successes are in this particular realm of expertise, it's your rate of success which is too far from satisfactory. One successful conversion for every three or four attempts is too low an average to inspire confidence."

"It is statistically impossible to expect a perfect success rate with something as complex as the conversion process! I cannot help it if the process risks permanent irreparable brain trauma or even death on the part of the subject."

"Which eloquently explains part of my personal misgivings about it."

"And what other misgivings do you have?"

"Time and energy are not infinite in supply. As I had said in the landing bay, the Leader wants to accelerate our schedule."

"I can appreciate the imperative behind the Leader's reasoning. But, once it's done, successfully converting Julie will be a definitive strategic advantage to defeating the local rebellion."

"I doubt that. If they had proper military instincts, they are far beyond the point of accepting that she has been rendered expendable."

"I don't agree."

"Perhaps not." Pamela put her hands on her hips as she turned to face Diana. "However, let us not forget whose opinion weighs more, and whose decisions will ultimately be followed."

Diana fumed, but told herself to disguise any outward reaction she may show. She looked down at her boots. "Yours, of course." She sighed. "Do you have other reservations to express, Commander?"

"Only one more," Pamela smiled. "My biggest misgiving is that I believe you have made the task of converting this Julie Parrish a purely personal affair."

"I assure you: That is so wide of the truth that it is laughable." Diana smiled smugly again. "Why would you think that?"

"Diana, my dear," said Pamela, reaching out to squeeze Diana's shoulder. "You are not the only one here who has a keen understanding of psychology."

Pamela gracefully turned to leave the observation room. "Despite what you are thinking, I do want to see you succeed in converting this woman. As you say, if she is successfully converted, she can be an exploitable asset if your analysis is somehow correct and her comrades welcome her back with open arms. That is why I am giving you one more week to finish converting her.

"If she has not been converted by the end of the week, I will kill her myself."


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

_as soon as any soul becomes a traitor,_

_as I was, then a demon takes its body_

_away and keeps that body in his power_

_until its years have run their course completely._

"Julie?"

Juliet inhaled sharply and tensed every muscle when she heard the voice. She had been asleep, albeit fitfully, and had curled herself up against one of the corners of her cell. Upon hearing the voice she woke up suddenly and coiled herself even tighter, trying to make herself as small as possible. She drew her head, elbows and knees in tighter against her torso and squeezed her eyes shut, making fresh tears well up without her bidding, and shook her head. "Please, no," she pleaded, her voice no more than a mere whimper. "No more, please. I can't. I just _can't_-"

"Julie," the voice said again. Though it had that sickeningly familiar Visitor vibrato, this voice was gentle, soothing. "I'm not here to hurt you."

It took every last bit of her courage, but somehow Julie forced herself to look over her right shoulder at the owner of that voice. She peered through her tears and saw a tall, lean figure in red. It was a Visitor woman with long, blond hair. Juliet sniffed, using the back of her hand, which still hurt from when she bit it not too long ago, to rub the tears from her eyes so that she could see better.

"I'm Lorraine," the tall Visitor said. She knelt down next to Julie, who whimpered and pressed herself harder into the wall. "Don't be afraid."

She peeked over shoulder at Lorraine again. She had never seen this particular Visitor before. Then she realized that the only ones she ever remembers seeing, the ones who entered her cell and dragged her out to be tortured and driven to near-madness, always wore gold helmets with the black visors lowered, obscuring their faces.

This Visitor smiled gently at her. She was carrying a tray with several items on it, including what looked like a tall cup which Julie hoped contained some water.

"I've brought you some food," said Lorraine. "Please eat. You need to keep your strength up."

"I don't want to."

"But you will die if you do not eat." Lorraine hesitated for a moment, then touched Julie's arm gently. The human flinched as if she had been burned, curling herself even more tightly.

"Don't touch me!"

Lorraine frowned. "Please, Julie." She put the tray down and lifted the lid off of one of the containers. "It's warm. I'm told you like your food warm."

Julie didn't respond. Lorraine waited and considered the situation.

"Please eat something," she prodded again. "If not, Diana has ways to force you to. As you already know, her ways can be," she paused for a moment, "very unpleasant for you."

Julie trembled visibly at the mention of Diana's name.

"Do not cling to the hope that she will simply let you starve. She hasn't let you yet; she will not allow you to die."

Julie raised herself slowly up on her elbow, still keeping her back to the Visitor in an apparent attempt to preserve her modesty. She hadn't worn a stitch of clothing in weeks, but she could never adjust to her state of constant nakedness. She looked at Lorraine, then at the tray of food which lay next to her.

Lorraine stood up from her crouch slowly and turned around, allowing the human some much craved-for privacy so she could take the food and drink from the tray with some dignity. "I am glad you have decided to eat. I'm told that, most times, you refuse to eat; you only drink the water."

Julie didn't move for about a minute, then she asked quietly, "Why are you still here?"

"I don't understand your question."

"Most times, someone just brings me the tray of food." Julie's voice was very still and small. "I never see who it is, or even when they bring it. They do it when I'm asleep and out of it." She cleared her throat. "It's as if... it's as if they don't want to be with me any longer than they have to. Like I'm worthless, or disgusting, or something."

She looked up hopefully at Lorraine, who still hadn't turned to face her. "I feel so dirty. I haven't bathed, or..." she trailed off, tears falling down her cheeks. She drew a deep, cleansing breath and tried to compose herself.

She looked down at the tray and its contents. She frowned at the visually-unappealing meat and the piece of bread, then confirmed that the cup did contain water. With her fingers, she tore off a small piece of the meat – it looked like a boiled chicken breast to her – and started eating. She took another small morsel, noting that, as always, the food was bland and flavorless, then took a sip from the cup.

"Do you think I want to die?" she asked Lorraine after a few minutes.

Lorraine didn't look at her when she answered. "I don't know. Do you?"

Julie carefully picked off a small piece of bread and nibbled on it. "Do you know how painful it is? How much it _hurts_?"

"I don't."

"No, you don't!" Julie shocked herself a bit with the aggressiveness of her tone. She blinked, making new tears trace hot paths down her cheeks, then put the food back on the tray. "I couldn't begin to tell you. You simply can't _know_ what it feels like."

"Tell me."

She then lay back down onto her side, sobbing. "She's right... momma was right. ** I **killed her."

"'Momma?' You killed your mother?"

"I didn't want to. But I did. I told her what happened, what Uncle Frank did. She said I was lying, but I wasn't. But she thought I was.

"I never lied to her, but she thought I did. I never did. Not about that.

"I broke her heart and she died. I killed her."

Julie sobbed anew. Nothing she did could keep the guilt and the grief from stabbing at her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I'm a bad person... I **hate** myself..."

She wept freely, as if she thought her tears could wash away the guilt that stained her heart and soul. "Momma," she sobbed, her breath catching in her throat. "I need you, momma."

"Shh. It's okay. I'm here."

Julie felt a comforting warmth spread through her. A gentle hand stroked her hair and touched her cheek. Loving lips kissed her softly on the top of her head, making her sigh.

"I've missed you."

"I've missed you too."

"Momma... I'm so sorry-"

"Shh."

"I need you... I can't keep on fighting it-"

"It's okay. I'm here."

"It hurts so much. I'm so scared."

"Be brave, Julie. You've always been brave-"

"I'm too scared, momma! I need you! Don't leave me-"

"I don't belong here, Julie."

"Don't leave me, please!"

"Be brave; be strong."

"Hold me... don't go-"

Julie felt her mother's loving arms encompass her. The embrace, so warm, so tender, filled her with a feeling of security she had not felt since... she couldn't actually remember the last time she felt so safe.

Eagerly she propped herself up, her arms returning the embrace. Julie leaned up against her mother, nuzzling her cheek, moist with her tears, into her mother's bosom. She sighed as she felt and heard her mother's heartbeat.

"I love you, momma."

"I love _you_, Julie."

"Stay with me, mom-"

"I _am_ with you."

Julie choked on her sobs. "I... I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to-"

"Shh... I know... I know..."

The tears fell freely down Julie's cheeks as she closed her eyes, allowing sleep to claim her once again.

**VVVVV**

"This does not look good."

"That's hardly descriptive."

"She has been damaged; even you must see that."

Martin and Bruce were in the observation room adjacent to Juliet Parrish's holding cell. The door to the room slid open, and Lorraine stepped through.

"I tried to speak with her, but she just lay there. I just left her food in the cell," Lorraine said. "I hope she is at peace."

"For the moment," Martin said, gesturing to Julie who was clearly in the midst of a hallucination. "Until her own mind assaults her again."

"Or until Diana calls for her to be returned to the conversion chamber," said Lorraine angrily.

"That won't be for a while. She has at least four or five hours before then," Bruce said. "She has to detox sufficiently before Diana can resume the conversion process. There's only so much of the serums that the human body can take within a given time period. Plus she has to recover from her heart attack. Our medicines should help her immensely." He looked at the human sadly. "With her, we've sometimes gone over the safety thresholds. I always advise Diana against doing that since it risks her health, even her life, but she wants to keep pushing."

Martin nodded, then turned to Lorraine. "At least she is eating some of the food you brought her."

"I wish we could do more to help her," Lorraine said. "Even take her back to her own people."

"As do I," replied Martin. "Unfortunately, as you know, that's simply impossible at the moment."

"I don't want to imagine what it's like to be her right now." Lorraine moved towards the one-way window, the palm of her right hand resting on the glass. It looked to Martin as if she was trying to reach through the partition to lay a comforting hand on Julie.

Lorraine continued, her voice low. "She didn't move, didn't say a word, when I came to bring her food in. She just lay there, stayed still and looked at me, a glassy look in her eyes, even as I spoke to her."

"We saw," said Martin. He then looked at Bruce. "I need to know: How bad is it?"

"I'll be honest with you," Bruce began, his hand rubbing his temple in an all-too-human gesture of consternation. "I monitor her vital signs, her physiological responses to the conversion process. Unfortunately, my specialization cannot determine the exact degree of the damage done on her psyche."

Martin looked grim. "But surely you can offer an informed opinion?"

"Martin, I know you work closely with the local rebellion, and that this prisoner is purported to be their leader." Bruce's curiosity was evident. "But you've never been this interested about anyone who has ever gone through the conversion process."

"I need to know," Martin said simply. "I must make some very difficult decisions, and I need as much information as I can get in order to make the right ones."

"Well," Bruce said, rubbing his temple again, "it might be altogether better if I don't know the reasons behind your curiosity." He shrugged. "Diana hasn't broken her yet, which, frankly, is amazing to me. But I fear that she is at her limit."

"Is there anything you can do to keep her from being converted?"

Bruce shrugged. "As part of Diana's handpicked team for this particular conversion operation, I do have some influence. But it's not nearly enough; Diana makes all the final decisions. From the outset I strongly advocated a conservative approach, if only to buy some time to allow you to find some way to return her to her comrades."

Martin flashed him a quick look, and Bruce smiled. "I recognize the danger to our movement that successfully converting this young woman represents, even if she's never had direct contact with us. Moreover, your compassionate nature is no secret; it is but one reason why the Column looks to you for leadership."

"I fear for her," Martin admitted, also deftly shifting the conversation away from himself. He turned to look through the one-way window at Julie. "She's running out of time."

Lorraine walked over to Martin and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. "I can sense the turmoil you're feeling," she deadpanned. "You and Donovan have discussed the possibility that it may already be too late to help Julie and have a plan just in case, haven't you?"

Martin shot her a look, and she met his gaze with resolve. "Some secrets you keep better than others."

"I will be honest with you," Martin said, breaking eye contact first. He looked at Julie again. "Donovan and I _have_ had conversations about that possibility. We have... a worst-case scenario contingency plan."

Lorraine tried to read Martin. His face was inscrutable. "Well?" she asked. "What is this plan?"

Martin didn't look at either of his companions when he spoke. "Donovan and I have agreed that, if it is **clear** that Julie has been converted, we will have to arrange an assassination attempt."

"Kill her? Isn't that a bit extreme?" Lorraine asked.

"It's too big a risk to allow her to return to the resistance if she has been converted," said Bruce. "I don't like the idea of killing her, but I do understand the logic behind this decision."

"Killing her doesn't sound like something neither you nor Donovan would sanction," Lorraine said to Martin. "You may be a soldier – an excellent one, in fact – but I have never known you as someone who was willing to take the life of an innocent."

"You are astute," Martin allowed. "Neither Donovan nor I want to kill Julie. But an ally of his – a man named Tyler – said something that was completely correct: This is war, and you must be pragmatic."

Lorraine looked at him doubtfully.

"War requires many sacrifices," Martin said. "Even ones you are most unwilling to make."

Lorraine touched Martin's arm. "But what if you're wrong, and she isn't converted?

"Are you prepared to be a murderer?"

**VVVVV**

"Thinking about your little lady friend."

Mike Donovan looked up at Ham Tyler. Mike was sitting on the porch of the saloon, one of the few buildings at the movie ranch which was actually mostly functional and not just a facade. He had felt the wooden floorboards move as Tyler approached, so he shifted position to give him a wide path down the steps. He thought that Tyler was on his way to another part of the rebel camp.

But Tyler had just stopped and taken a place behind him. Apparently this was one of those rare occasions when the ex-CIA man actually wanted to talk.

Donovan didn't want, or expect, any conversations at the moment.

The front of the saloon just happened to be oriented towards the southwest, giving him a view of the Los Angeles skyline. Even from this distance he could see the lights on the skyscrapers marking the heart of downtown. And above the skyline, two gigantic Mother Ships hung over the city. He thought that the pair of mammoth spacecraft looming over the city looked like ominous storm clouds.

The comparison to storm clouds seemed apt to him; they echoed the tumult raging deep within himself.

Donovan sighed, and his mind returned to the present.

Tyler was still standing there, just behind him, still also just staring out towards downtown Los Angeles.

What Tyler had said puzzled him, though, as it didn't strike him as either a question or a statement. "What do you want, Tyler?" he asked, finally, deciding that it was impossible to decipher the inscrutable ex-CIA man.

"How did it happen?"

"How did what happen?"

"How did your little lady friend get nabbed by the lizards in the first place?"

Donovan stood up and shrugged, then leaned against a wooden post. It was as if that was the only thing that kept him from collapsing into the dust. "We were on the run, in the hospital. We had a plan to get out of there, with the Fifth Column's help. Martin and I, we had everything set up."

"There was a hitch, something you didn't account for."

Mike nodded. "Somehow she wound up covering the rear, while the rest of us were rushing into a deactivated elevator shaft up to the roof of the hospital. We had ladders set up; we had our ride home arranged and waiting for us.

"I thought we had every base covered.

"But then I guess she saw a bunch of troopers rushing to our position, so she decided to take a stand and cover us. I heard her yell to close the door to the elevator shaft – we couldn't open it from the inside – and she was separated from us. I wanted to go back for her, but -"

"It was her choice, Gooder."

"I know it was, but -"

"She made a choice," Tyler repeated. "She didn't want the whole outfit to get caught or, much worse, killed." Donovan looked at him doubtfully. "It's not your fault she got into this jam."

"Oh no? Why does it feel like it is, then?"

"'Cause you've made the mistake of mixing business with the personal stuff." Donovan whirled around, apparently stung. "Deny it if you want; you know I'm dead on target.

"Don't get me wrong: I said we'll help get her out of this.

"But you've got to let go. Guilt is a monster, and it will eat you alive if you let it. It'll be the death of you."

Donovan looked at him, then looked down at his feet and shook his head.

"Damn."

**VVVVV**

This is what Juliet Parrish feels, right now:

Your legs strain as you dig your feet into the floor beneath you. Your shorts are wet, having urinated on yourself in fear. A very strong, roughly-calloused hand grips your left arm. You do your best to wriggle and twist away, but you are far too small, far too weak to do anything.

You shut your eyes, and you scream.

You don't want to look at him, even if the darkness is enough to obscure his face.

You hear his breathing: Rough, heavy, frightening. It is almost bestial. When he talks to you, you hear and feel the malice.

He laughs at you, and you scream at the top of your lungs. But it fails to drown out the malicious laughter.

You feel his other hand grab your other arm. He drags you down effortlessly onto the floor. You try to punch his arms, claw at his hands, anything to try and get him to release his steely grip on you. One of his hands does release your arm, but he holds you down very easily even with just his other hand.

"We're going to have so much fun, kid," he says to you, his voice echoing in your mind. _"_So much fun playing together!"

His free hand lifts the hem of your shirt, and you feel his fingernails, long and claw-like, dragging themselves lightly over your exposed skin in circles. Then he pulls your drenched shorts off with one tug and rubs you with his fingertips through your underwear.

You can't suppress the shudder.

"Don't tell anybody about this," he threatens. "If you do, I know where you live. I'll kill you, your daddy, and mommy too."

With a strength that frightens you even more, he tugs on your underwear, forcing the material to dig painfully into you and lifting your hips off of the ground before it finally rips away in tatters like paper. You instantly lift your knees up to your chest and squeeze your legs together, trying to roll yourself into a ball to protect yourself. He laughs as he pries you open easily, his hand again touching the most private places.

He laughs as you scream again.

Then he growls, "Look at me!"You keep your eyes tightly shut, not wanting to face this monster hovering above you. "I said look at me,"he insists again.

You don't comply, so he starts slapping you. The pain makes you gasp, and you can't help but choke on your sobs. After a few seconds, he stops hitting you. Then you feel his hands all over you again, especially on parts of your body not covered by clothing. You try to strike at him blindly, but even when you hit him it hurts you more than you know it hurts him.

"You'll like this!" he says as he stops for a moment. "I'll make you feel like a grownup, and you're gonna feel so good."

You gasp in shock as you feel him push first one of his thick fingers, then two, inside you, squirming and twisting around like fat, giant worms. He pulls his fingers almost all the way out of you, then pushes them in again.

"Momma," you call out weakly. "Help me, momma-"

"She can't help you,"he sneers. "She WILL NOT help you."

You start to seriously hurt between your legs, and as he moves his fingers in and out you feel something wet trickle out of you. "You're starting to bleed,"he taunts.

You hear a moist pop as he yanks his fingers out, and as you gasp in surprise you instinctively open your eyes.

In the darkness you see the fingers that had been inside you mere inches in front of your face.

They are coated in a green liquid.

His fingers, which had been inside you, ARE COATED IN GREEN.

You are BLEEDING GREEN.

Then you see **his** face, twisted in a grotesque smile that proclaims his complete contempt for you.

You see Michael Donovan's face.

And you scream again.

"It's not true! It's not true!" Julie kept repeating. "It can't be! Not you!"

Bruce frowned as he studied the telemetry on Julie's medical status. "Diana, I warned you of the seriousness of-"

"Yes, yes," Diana interrupted, waving a hand at him impatiently. "Never mind." She then leaned towards Paul. "Give me maximum."

Paul flicked some switches on his main control board.

Coruscating beams of red light danced on Julie's face and joined the blue flashes encircling her in the conversion chamber, making her scream anew.

You are seized by involuntary convulsions, and you shake in uncontrolled, jerking spasms. Red lights moving madly all over your entire field of vision introduce you to a whole new definition of pain, as if the crimson flashes in your eyes are bypassing all of your nerves, searing the pain receptors in your brain directly.

For a few fleeting moments, just after the red beams first flashed in your eyes, you hear nothing, even as you virtually empty your lungs wailing in agony. A small corner of your mind wonders about that apparently silent scream, and you panic. Have you gone deaf? Have all these high-tech torments permanently damaged your mind, destroyed your senses, your ability to perceive and interact with the world? Given all the torments you are being forced to suffer – how long have you been fighting to hold out against the tortures now? You can't remember – you think that maybe this is better anyway.

Maybe this is the beginning of the end, and this is how it feels to die.

So sweet, the mercy of death, the freedom from torture.

Then, all of a sudden, you regain your hearing. You are shocked when you hear your own agonized screams echoing within the conversion chamber. The chamber's glass walls reflect the sounds back to you, reinforcing the idea that, in here, pain and terror are your constant, and only, companions. The sound of your own pain-filled voice, raw and strained, filling your ears only adds yet another layer to your suffering.

And yet, beneath your own screams and their echoes, beneath the sound and sensation of your own frenzied heartbeat pounding like a bass drum played hard and fast in your ears, beneath the sound of your ragged, panic-filled attempts to replenish your lungs with oxygen, a high-pitched pulsing tone drills itself into your consciousness, latching on to your auditory nerves and overwhelming your mind's capacity to organize your own thoughts and make sense of anything.

And beneath that pervasive pulsing tone, you hear a voice.

A comforting voice.

A soothing voice.

A voice that sounds musical, harmonic and melodic, seducing you to give over all of your being if the voice asked you to.

It is _her_ voice.

_She _is speaking to you, the tone in her voice imploring you to comply.

"_Let me stop the pain, Julie. Let me help you."_

"No!" you scream without thinking.

But even as the words leave your lips, your body is racked with a new wave of electric agony.

It is dark. The shadows have cast a nearly impenetrable veil on your vision.

But your ears compensate, and you hear everything. And everything you hear makes you flinch.

You hear the grunts, the heavy breaths, and the sounds of flesh slapping repeatedly against flesh. You hear the whimpers and the meek protests, the word "no" repeating over and over and over again as counterpoints to the grunting and the heavy breathing.

Everything you hear frightens you, so you want to run far away from the source of these sounds and voices. For some unknown reason, however, you feel drawn to them. So you pad slowly and quietly towards them.

The darkness slowly becomes less complete, and you can see a little bit more with each reluctant step forward. You continue, feeling your way with your fingertips gliding along the walls.

You round the corner, knowing through familiarity that you're almost to your parents' bedroom.

Then you stop in your tracks as you see dim yet unmistakable shapes in the shadows.

You see two people. One is larger than the other. Even in the darkness, you can tell that the smaller figure is a woman on her back lying on the bed, and the larger one is a man, a thick bundle of what you think are his trousers around his feet.

For some reason you don't quite understand, the man is between the woman's legs as he stands at the edge of the bed. He is bent forwards at the waist so that his arms are supporting much of his weight. The woman tries to raise herself up from the bed, struggling to kick away at the man in between her legs, but cannot do it, losing out to his superior strength and leverage. You watch as she cries.

The man is moving in sudden, almost violent motions. His movements are matched with grunts in rhythm with the motions, and each grunt is answered by a pained whimper from the woman. You suddenly understand that the movements are in time with the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, the grunts and pained whimpers adding yet more elements to the pain-filled rhythms filling your ears.

Your eyes strain in the darkness, and you see the woman trying to strike and claw at the man moving between her legs. This only makes him angry, and he hits her with multiple blows to her face with open-palmed strikes. While you don't quite understand everything you're looking at, the violence is something which swells your fear even more.

Then you hear her voice as she begs for mercy, an end to the violence. It's a familiar voice.

It's _her_ voice.

_Momma_, you think to yourself as you keep on watching the scene in front of you.

At that moment, you see her eyes as she finally looks directly at you. Even in the darkness, you see them so clearly. Very blue, almost unnaturally so, much darker and a very different shade compared to yours. They are opened so widely, it seems as if they allow you a look into her soul. It's enough to make you believe you can feel everything she's feeling.

It's enough to make you gasp.

As soon as you do, though, the man at the foot of the bed stops his animal-like movements and turns his head in your direction.

_Oh no_. _He _**heard** _you!_

His eyes glow fiercely in the darkness as they lock onto yours. You cannot see his features clearly in the shadows, but you can tell that his face has suddenly twisted into a grotesque smile, assuming the look of a predator which has seen its favorite prey.

"Julie," your mother gasps. "Please," she begs the man. "Don't hurt her, please!"

The man turns slowly away from you for a moment, facing the woman trying to raise herself off of the bed. With a sudden motion he backhands her with a closed fist.

You gasp again as the blow connects. You scream. "Momma!Don't hurt my momma!"

"Julie," she starts to say. Her voice is weak and strained. Agony seems to radiate from her, and you can feel the throbs of pain that she is feeling.

The man turns to look at you again, smiling malevolently. He bends down, and with his left hand he reaches for something fastened to his ankle. In the darkness you see the glint of something long and pointed.

Then you see the man's left arm move rapidly, and the woman on the bed gasps repeatedly. She seems as if she is trying to scream, but cannot do it. You hear a horrible squishing sound with every movement the man's arm makes.

"Julie," the woman gurgles. "He's... he's stabbed me..."

"Momma! Momma, no!"

"Run," she urges you hoarsely, straining with a gigantic effort. "Run... run for your life!"

You're frozen in place, watching the horror unfolding in front of you, until the man plunges the long, pointed object into the neck of the woman on the bed.

You scream, still too frightened to do anything but watch. The woman on the bed twitches uncontrollably, then sinks into the bed with a sickening finality. The man then pulls his weapon slowly out of her neck, then turns back to look in your direction. He kicks his trousers off of his feet.

"You're the one I really want."

He starts to move towards you. You look at him, eyes wide open, paralyzed with terror.

"Aww, will you look at that," the man says as he slowly walks towards you. "The little girl pissed herself watching her mommy die before her eyes."

An intense heat fills your cheeks when you feel the warm wetness trickling down your legs. You can't keep your eyes off of the man as he keeps advancing towards you.

You take a slow step backwards, then another.

He keeps getting closer.

_I don't know what to do... I don't know what to do..._

You can't catch your breath. Every single one of your muscles feels like it's on fire. Your body quakes uncontrollably as fatigue and exhaustion are about to overwhelm you.

So this is what it's like to die.

Pain is all you know.

Terror is all you feel.

Nothing else exists for you.

"I don't know what to do... I don't know what to do...," you keep repeating to yourself, seeking answers to a question that ought to be so simple, even as it evades all your efforts to comprehend it.

You don't know how to think anymore, it seems.

Through the dense cacophony of shrill pulsing tones and your own echoing screams being crammed into your ears and into your mind, you hear _her_ voice again.

_Run, Julie_, it tells you. _Run for your life! Run faster, Julie, run faster!_

You turn around and sprint, not bothering to look back at him.

You don't need to see him. You can **feel **him start to chase you into the gloom. His heavy footfalls make the boards beneath your feet creak in weary protest.

You almost lose your balance; your bedroom slippers don't afford you much grip on the hardwood floor. You scream as you almost fall, trying to turn the corner into the kitchen.

Then you scream again as you feel the rush of air his hand displaces as reaches out to grab you, his arm moving like a snake uncoiling and striking at its prey.

He missed, but he laughs as if this was all a game the two of you were playing.

You knock a couple of chairs down as you fly past them, hoping to obstruct him. The ploy works, as you hear him curse and you feel the thud of his body crashing onto the kitchen floor. You dare not look back, your full attention focused on the door to the backyard.

Your hand grips the doorknob, twists it, and you burst through.

And you find yourself in a hallway lit by white fluorescent lights.

**VVVVV**

"Heart rhythms are irregular again," Bruce cautioned as he looked at his monitor's readout.

When Diana didn't answer, he glanced over his left shoulder at her. All of her attention was fixed on the woman inside the conversion chamber.

"She's close," she said quietly to Paul. Diana then left her place at the control board, walking towards an access hatch into the conversion chamber itself.

Bruce sighed, then reached into the folds on the front of his uniform. His hand found the two-and-a-half inch long cylinder secreted inside and pressed the button on its end.

"Don't take too long, Martin," he thought to himself.

**VVVVV**

"Just a few minutes more, Barbara," said Martin. "We're almost done with the finishing touches."

"I know." Barbara lay still as the low-grade micro-laser traced a beam of light melting the seams between the sections of synth-skin, blending them perfectly. "It's a good thing we kept these from all those months ago," she said, running her palm down the leg of the pants she was wearing.

Martin smiled, but she couldn't miss its grim melancholy edge. "Why so glum, Martin?" She reached out for his hand, smiling as she felt him squeeze. "I volunteered to do this, remember?"

"Perhaps so," Martin said. "It doesn't mean that I personally approve of it."

"Don't move," said Lorraine, intense concentration obvious in her face. "If we're not careful with this, we may have to do the whole thing over, and we don't have time to spare."

Barbara chanced a tiny smile at Lorraine, then became still again. "Well..." Barbara sighed. "Think of the best-case scenario: We can solve our biggest problem, if everything goes according to plan."

Martin squeezed Barbara's hand tighter. "Your bravery is beyond measure. You do credit to both our movement and our race."

"Coming from you, that is probably the greatest compliment one can ever expect to receive."

"Lorraine and I, and the rest of our movement, we will be infinitely poorer without you."

Barbara closed her eyes and looked away. "We all have to play our parts, don't we? I have made sacrifices for our movement before and risked my life... I will do it again."

Martin smiled wanly and sighed. "I wish this one was unnecessary."

"As do I," Lorraine confirmed. "There. All done."

Barbara sat up and swung her legs to her right side, gracefully hopping off of the reclined chair where she had spent the better part of the last hour and a half. Lorraine offered her a mirror, which she took. She inspected the product of Lorraine's labors with a critical eye. "Looks great," she said.

A series of electronic beeps startled her. Martin took a small device from one of the compartments mounted on his belt and pressed a button, then looked at both his companions.

"It's time," he said. He handed Barbara a laser rifle, then he and Lorraine bowed slightly, a gesture of ultimate respect. "And thank you."

Barbara took the rifle, looked at both Martin and Lorraine, then hurried away and left the room.

"I hate suicide missions," Martin thought.

**VVVVV**

You blink several times; you can't believe what you're seeing. A long hallway stretches out ahead of you. There are doors on both sides of the hall, spaced several feet apart, and along the walls at random places are wheelchairs, carts, and other pieces of miscellaneous medical equipment.

The floor shakes beneath you, and the sounds and rhythms of boot falls shock you back into the moment. You break into a sprint down the hallway, pressing your elbows tightly against your sides and pulling on the long, flowing cape so that your gown doesn't catch on the obstacles in your path.

The never-ending chase is on yet again.

Your mind registers the fact that you're holding a Visitor laser pistol in your left hand and a Glock 17C 9mm in the other. The weapons you're carrying doesn't take the edge off of the fear, the terror, of being caught in this chase you find yourself in.

Your shoes slide on the floor as you change direction, cutting to the left into another hallway. At the end of this one is a set of double doors which swing open and shut via a pair of pneumatically-actuated springs. You push through the fatigue, the ache of your leg and core muscles and the burn of oxygen depletion in your lungs, and will yourself to sprint faster.

_The elevator shaft_, you think to yourself. _Escape._

You burst through the double doors, then slide onto the floor as you try and stop at what greets you on the other side.

A sea of red and black uniforms. You look up at a dozen or so Visitor Shock Troopers, their faces hidden behind the ominous black face plates, standing there with their laser rifles drawn.

You feel your heart pounding hard and fast in your chest, and you feel unsure about what to do. The chase has made you dizzy, breathless, but strangely the fact that you are no longer running, no longer being pursued, gives you a bizarre feeling of peace.

The Shock Troopers move to surround you. You just raise yourself to a seated position on the floor, still holding on to the weapons in your hands, still unsure about what to make of things.

Suddenly you feel a splash of something wet and sticky on your hair, then on your face, and instinctively you close your eyes rapidly. The hallway erupts with the sounds and fury of multiple laser weapon discharges and assault rifle fire, and you feel more of the wet and sticky stuff splatter all over you like some kind of disgusting rain shower. You chance a tiny peek out of your left eye.

All around you the Shock Troopers are falling onto the floor, their bodies peppered with bloody wounds. The smell of exploded gunpowder and burnt ozone wafts into your nostrils. You glance down at your white gown, only now it isn't white; it is splattered with spots of translucent green.

You wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand, and the liquid you wipe off is green. You contain your disgust and wipe your hand on your gown, then look around, bewildered at precisely how the last few moments unfolded.

Then you see him.

Michael Donovan.

He is standing behind you, holding an M4 with its barrel smoking. "Come on," he says. "Let's go."

He takes your arm, and he pulls you up to your feet. He steps over a Shock Trooper's corpse, then helps you do the same. The green blood pooling on the floor has made the floor slick, though, and you fall into a puddle of it. The smell and the sensation of the alien blood all over you make you want to vomit, but you hold it in. Donovan drops his assault rifle, lifts you up, and carries you to the elevator.

The heavy metal doors are shut, but Donovan pulls your shoes off and tosses them at the dead Visitor soldiers, then puts you on the floor. He then pulls the doors apart. "Get in," he tells you, and you scurry into the dimly-lit shaft. As soon as you get inside, he joins you and closes the doors again, taking both guns from your hands as he encloses you in a seemingly protective embrace.

The two of you stay quiet inside the shaft on top of the deactivated elevator car, breathing heavily, but otherwise staying quiet. You stiffen when you hear the rush of rushing boots on the other side of the door. "Donovan," you whisper.

"Shh," he says, holding you tighter. "I've got you now. It's gonna be OK."

You reciprocate, tightening your arms around his back, pulling him towards you. You rest your head on his chest – he's so tall – and feel his heartbeat, so strong and steady, and his warmth.

"It's not your fault," he says. "It's not your fault, shh..."

You look up at him, bewildered, but he keeps repeating himself, never looking at you. "It's not your fault... it's not your fault..."

With a sudden, explosive violence, he pushes forward and pins you against the wall of the elevator shaft. The impact stuns you, forcing out what little breath you have left in your lungs. The sound of metal clanging on metal echoes inside the narrow shaft, and feel both the Visitor laser sidearm and the 9mm handgun by your feet. With an almost animal-like quickness he had dropped the weapons and had freed his hands up, which now grip both your wrists up against your head.

"Donovan-"

He sneers as you say his name, then mashes his lips into your mouth. You feel his tongue ram its way inside, probing around like an exploring serpent, but you clamp your jaws shut, not willing to open up to the sudden invasion. He pulls both of your arms up, then clamps them together with his left hand. You test his grip quickly, but he holds you so easily. His size and strength are far greater than yours.

After almost a full minute of the unwanted, violent kiss, he stops to look at you. Tears are falling down your cheeks. "Please," you beg, whimpering. "I don't want this!"

"Don't cry, Julie," he says, sounding to you like the love of your life would. "I would never hurt you." With his free hand, he reaches behind him and draws a foot-long dagger, its blade stained red with some unknown person's blood. The thought occurs to you that perhaps the stains are from multiple victims.

"Trust me," he says as he presses the tip of the dagger against the bottom of your jaw, then uses it to rip the side of your bodice, just under your right armpit. You press yourself harder back against the wall, if only to prevent the bodice from falling off completely.

"Stupid," he says to you, before he starts kissing your neck and the upper part of your chest. "Don't fight me. Relax. I'm not gonna hurt you." He peels off part of your bodice, then his free hand goes to work.

You start to fight, trying to raise a knee to hit his groin, but he had anticipated that move and blocked it, trapping your legs against the wall with his. You stare at the dagger, which he holds perilously close to your right eye.

"It's not your fault," he says again. "I know that's what's on your mind."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it's true, Julie." He stops his unwanted, loathsome play with his mouth on you, his face twisted in a grotesque, scornful smile. "You know it is."

With the speed of a striking mamba, he lets go of your outstretched arms, then grabs your left wrist and twists it around to your back, forcing you to bend forwards as he steps to your left side. He pushes your wrist higher up your back, and you have no choice but to fall to your knees.

You cry out in pain, but he keeps driving your wrist up inexorably towards your nape. He only lets go of your arm when you find yourself on your belly, sprawled on the elevator car's top, with him kneeling down beside you keeping a heavy hand on your back.

"It's not your fault she's dead," he says as you hear the sound of fabric ripping. "It's not your fault that, all your life, the same thing keeps happening to you."

"What? What keeps happening to me?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet? All your life, you've been running. Running, running for your life, just like she told you to." You hear more fabric tearing, then suddenly goosebumps erupt all over your skin.

"I don't want to die!" you scream.

He stops what he's doing – you're too afraid to look back at him, too afraid to move, too afraid of getting hurt more than you already have been – and lowers himself so that he's right on top of you. Your bare skin crawls as soon as you feel the fabric of his shirt and pants.

"You don't want to die? Like your mom did?" he taunts you as you feel him move one of his hands around the small of your back, then hear the muffled sound of a belt being unbuckled.

You writhe beneath his crushing weight, so much larger is he than you, despite the fact that his arms are supporting the top half of his body. Then you feel the point of the dagger's tip dig into the soft flesh in your right side, just above your hip. It doesn't break the skin, but it very quickly stops your struggles.

He leans down, his face inches away from yours, and he whispers like a lover would, "Like I've been saying, Julie: It's not your fault your mom's dead." He rips away the remnants of the tatters of your gown from you with the dagger, tossing the bodice and the cape and sleeves and the skirt into the corner of the shaft, before he dismounts and rolls you so that now you're looking up at him.

His leering grin hurts you more than anything else has ever hurt you. "You don't have to carry the guilt, that crushing guilt, you keep inside you." He strokes your cheek.

"**I KILLED HER**," he says tenderly. "And what did you do? **YOU JUST WATCHED WHEN I DID IT**."

He smiles at you, then says, "And when I'm done fucking you, **I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, TOO.**"

So now it has come to this.

_Julie._

He's going to rape you.

_Listen to me._

And then he's going to kill you.

_Remember what he did to me?_

Like he killed your mother.

_He hurt me; he killed me._

There's no doubt in your mind; you saw it happen.

_You watched him do it._

And he's absolutely right, what he said.

_Now he has you; he's raping you, and when he's done, he **will** kill you._

All your life, you've wanted run away from everything bigger than you.

_There's nowhere to run now._

Sure, there have been times when you'd stand your ground, settle in for a fight. But during all those times, you were never on your own, never alone. You've always had someone there to help you carry the load, the responsibility.

_Tell me, Julie, what do you want to do?_

But now... Things are so different right now.

_What do you **have** to do?_

It's just you and him.

_There's no one to help you._

And he's already told you what he wants to do with you, what he wants to do to you.

_Tell me, Julie: Tell me what you want._

Running for your life is no longer possible.

"_Momma, what do I do?"_

You either let him use you, hurt you, kill you...

"_I don't want to die!"_

… or you fight him.

_Tell me what you want, Julie!_

Even if it could cost you your life.

"_I don't want to die!"_

So now, it has come to this.

_What do you want?_

What **do** you want?

"_Stop! I want this to stop!"_

You want this rape to stop. You want the pain to stop.

You want the **GUILT** to stop.

_You know what you have to do to make him stop._

_You only have to _**CHOOSE**.

Suddenly, everything seems so obvious and clear.

His eyes are closed; from the look of his face, mere inches away from yours, he is obviously enjoying himself. He has let go of the dagger, relying purely on his weight and size advantage to pin you in place as he has his way with you. His hands are busy roaming all over your body. Despite being able to move your arms from the elbows down, you cannot make him stop hurting you.

Through the growing haze of agony and the roiling emotions comes _her_ voice, telling you: _"You know what you have to do to make him stop. You only have to _**CHOOSE**."

Choose?

You want him to stop hurting you. You want him to stop the rape, and you want to leave this place.

You want to live.

But what can you do?

You know that you cannot reason with him; you can sense as he's using you as something to enjoy that whatever is driving him to perpetrate these unspeakable acts against you, it is animal-like and primal, raw and purely instinctual. Begging him would probably only spur him on and magnify his cruelty. Words would be utterly useless.

What can you do to make him stop?

The only way is to kill him.

"_Julie,"_ her voice says,_ "you have to choose. Tell me what you want to do."_

So you tell her, and her only. _"I want to kill him! To make it stop!"_

You feel your fear and the guilt dissolve away as soon as you make the conscious choice. You suddenly realize that, all along, the fear, the terror, that terrible guilt, all these things you're experiencing have done nothing but keep you imprisoned and tortured. Your own fears, your own guilt, they fed themselves in a vicious cycle that kept you in thrall.

Now you feel a strange sensation, that of all the walls that kept all of your bitterness inside just falling away at your feet. A small corner of your mind tells you that, starting this moment, you have been reborn.

You feel **FREE**.

It really was so easy. All you really had to do all along was choose.

Your left eye catches the glint of the dagger's blade just by your left hand, just out of reach. You strain, trying to reach for it, to touch it, to use it. But it remains unreachable.

The sheer frustration makes your anger swell, and as your anger grows so does your desire to kill this monster. You ignore the pain, dragging your arm across the filthy, oily, rough metal surface on the top of the elevator, even as it lacerates your skin. You will yourself to not notice your blood mingling with the grease. You just use all your willpower to harness enough strength, enough flexibility, to touch the dagger and somehow put it in your left hand.

Your heart leaps when your fingertips finally manage to touch the dagger. You give a bigger effort, and you revel in the feeling of your fingers dragging the dagger's handle closer towards the palm of your hand. You think of nothing else now, and you picture the dagger in your hand.

You imagine it, then it becomes real. You are able to close your hand around the dagger's handle, and you look at him on top of you, completely oblivious to your efforts.

_I thought you loved me_, you think to yourself. _I have to do this, even if you'd kill me if I fail._

Your left arm moves, poised to strike...

Diana stood at the foot of the raised platform inside the conversion chamber, looking up at Julie. The hallucinating young woman was completely oblivious to the presence of the person responsible for her torturous anguish.

"Julie," Diana implored, climbing slowly up the stairs at the front of the platform, "you have to choose. Tell me what you want to do."

"I want to kill him! To make it stop!"

"Then do it."

Diana watched as Julie raised her left arm, then move it as if she was stabbing something or someone just in front of her. The human screamed in horror and pain as she acted out the fantasy.

"Stop!" Julie begged. "Stop, please!"

Diana waved her hand, then watched as the conversion chamber shut off at her command. Her mind and body no longer under the machine's control, Julie collapsed onto the conversion platform, shivering in the cold air, sobbing helplessly.

You fall forward. You first feel your knees crashing onto the floor, then your hands. The pain which had been your constant companion was suddenly gone, replaced by a ringing in your ears and a tear-filled haze through which you perceive the world.

You can't control yourself, though you remain hyper-aware. You can't stop yourself from sobbing – you don't know if it's from joy or from sorrow, from terror or from elation, from regret or from relief, or all these emotions all at once – so you just let go. You want to just collapse fully and let unconsciousness claim you, but you fight the feeling and try to raise yourself up.

Then you feel her. You feel her approach, you feel her arms wrap around your shivering body, drenched in your perspiration, and you try to put your head onto her shoulder. It feels good just to touch her.

"Momma," you whisper.

Then the sounds of violence explode around you, hurting your ears. You get blinded by a couple of intense flashes of light, then you feel yourself flung to the floor. You see a figure in red leap away from you, then you hear the sound of glass shattering.

Through the haze you see the shape of a shadow. Fear again grabs you, but you watch as everything seems to happen in slow motion. The shadow coalesces into flesh tones and earthy colors, brown and tan, and then you see something black – a firearm of some sort, a rifle, a corner of your mind tells you – move and point towards you.

Mute and dumb you watch, gasping for breath, not understanding what it is you're seeing and not knowing what to do. You look at the face of what had been the shadow, and you shiver again as you recognize his face.

_Mike._

You look into his eyes, greenish blue, and wonder at what you're seeing.

Then you see more intense flashes of light, and hear more sounds of violence explode around you. You watch as his face contorts in agony, then he falls backwards, slowly, slowly retreating back into the darkness of the shadow from which he had come.

You feel compelled to reach out to him, but even as you try to stand, pain seizes you until you cannot help but return its embrace and collapse into unconsciousness.


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

_And of that second kingdom will I sing_

_Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself,_

_And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy._

"They're lovely, don't you think?" Diana held a blue lovebird in her hand. She was walking towards a cage filled with them. "A pity we don't have such creatures on our planet." She opened the door to the cage and released the bird back into it. The rest of the birds twittered as if in panic until she closed the cage again.

"Yes, so lovely," Pamela replied distractedly. She was in Diana's office, seated in Diana's chair, reading the report on the incident in the conversion chamber from a couple of hours earlier. She leaned back into the chair. "Do you think they'll try another assassination attempt?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Diana scoffed. "Donovan is dead, Julie is almost converted - "

"'Almost converted'? Could you be more precise?"

"At the time of the incident, I had just successfully broken Julie. She only needs further conditioning and programming and a final evaluation period before she can be designated and deployed as one of our assets."

"And how long would such conditioning and programming take? Hopefully not as long as it has taken to get to this point."

"No, no. Programming the subject is considerably easier than breaking her will and making her compliant. It should take only a few brief sessions."

"The rebels are intrepid," Pamela said, smoothly changing the subject. "How could they possibly manage to penetrate our security, have one of their leaders come aboard the Mother Ship, and stage an assassination attempt?"

"It hardly matters," Diana said, smiling. She recognized Pamela's tactic of trying to shift the conversation away from an area where she was finally enjoying some success. "The resistance movement is crippled and in disarray. We have nothing to fear from them."

Pamela tapped away into her data reader, which also functioned as a communications device. "Nevertheless, I've given orders to increase security."

"**I** give the orders on **my** ship."

"Your ship," Pamela began, standing up from the chair, "is but one in **my **squadron. You forget your rank, Diana."

"I may not have your rank, but I have the Leader's special interest," Diana said, eying her superior officer with undisguised contempt. "Which, I might say, is even more desirable than rank."

"I wouldn't rely too heavily on that relationship," Pamela said coolly. "That trap has seen some very heavy traffic."

"I don't believe you."

"Diana, my dear... sex for favors is as old as ambition." Pamela's smile was sweet but deadly as she spoke. "And sex is too fragile a foundation to handle your ambition."

"You seem to have managed."

"Well, that's because I've managed my ambition. You might take a moment to reflect that... your lover has sent you fifty and a half trillion miles away, hardly an indication he can't bear not to see you."

Pamela smiled again, satisfied with the obvious hatred in Diana's face. "My dear Diana, you're too easy to provoke," she thought. "What potential the Leader sees in you, I personally cannot."

An electronic chime broke the heavy tension hanging between Diana and Pamela. Diana moved towards her desk and pressed a button on a keypad, allowing the door into her private office to open. Martin walked in, looking at both women with a neutral expression.

"Pamela, Diana, I think you should come with me," he said simply.

**VVVVV**

Martin led Diana and Pamela through the corridors of the Mother Ship, down into the section hidden from most human eyes. It occurred to him that the only humans who ever see this part of the ship were unfortunate prisoners destined for an extended stay. Either they were designated as subjects – victims – for the conversion process, or they were going to be unwilling participants in one of Diana's scientific "experiments." _Except for Donovan, of course. He was an "uninvited guest," as his people might say, the first time he saw this part of the Mother Ship. _Whatever the case was, this was a place no human ever wanted to see.

Occasionally during the trek into the innards of the ship, he would surreptitiously look back over his shoulder, trying to study the faces of his two superior officers. Where Pamela's face was an example of perfect cool and control, Diana's visage scarcely hid the fiery emotions smoldering beneath the synth-skin. Martin allowed himself a small smile. He felt absolutely no doubts about his instinctive appraisal of the relationship between the two women.

_They very intensely dislike each other._

The strategic part of Martin's mind clung fiercely to this new observation. There was no question about the pleasure he felt with this latest discovery.

_That's good. This ought to make the next part easier._

Martin led Diana and Pamela down one last darkened corridor, then stopped in front of a hatch. He entered the access code, and the hatch slid open. He bowed respectfully as Diana and Pamela entered the morgue, then followed the women inside.

Steven turned towards them. He was standing next to a gurney with a sheet covering a body. "I have something to show you," he said, drawing the sheet to expose the face of Mike Donovan. The skin on the face looked wrinkly, almost unnaturally so. Steven pinched off a loose section of skin on the right cheek and pulled. "Final identification is pending."

Diana gasped audibly when the skin tore off, exposing gray-green scales underneath. She shoved Steven aside, then dug her fingers into the body's left cheek. As the cheek's synth-skin ripped, Diana lost all her self-control and violently mutilated the disguise on the dead body. "One of us!" she seethed. "One of **m**y own people tried to kill me!"

"Fifth Column," Steven said calmly. "It's spread across the Fleet; every ship is reporting incidents."

"Not on this ship! I'll have no traitors on this ship!" Diana said, finally stopping herself from further ripping apart the dead Visitor's synth-skin. She had the fake Donovan's wig in her hand when she looked at Martin. "I want a staff meeting called for immediately!" She paused to look at Pamela. "With your permission, of course, Pamela."

Pamela gave her a tiny smile and tilted her head to one side, signaling her assent.

"If I may," Martin interrupted, "I would like to suggest that we transfer all our important prisoners to Earth Security Headquarters until the Mother Ship can be secured, and the Fifth Column flushed out and eliminated."

"He's right," agreed Steven. "As long as this ship's contaminated with them, we're vulnerable. We have the local rebels' leader; we don't want to lose her."

"I agree," Pamela said.

"Yes, do it," Diana said. She flung the wig down at the body on the gurney and stomped out of the morgue, Martin following her closely.

Pamela approached the body and pulled off the prosthetic human tongue, then drew the real Visitor forked tongue out of the mouth. It was cold in her hands. She looked at Steven, then glanced furtively at the door out of the morgue. "Is she always like that?" she asked the Chief of Security.

"Like what?"

"On edge."

Steven looked at Pamela, wondering what the point of this particular line of questioning was. He was unsure. Was this question asked out of some kind of compassion for Diana? Or was it some kind of test, a trap even, perhaps designed to reveal his own veiled opinions about Diana? One thing he knew for certain about Pamela was that more often than not, it was almost impossible to read her intentions, to discern her private thoughts. So he decided to play safe.

"Frankly, yes."

"It must be the strain of her position."

"Yes, it must be," Steven said, nodding gravely.

"We must offer her our support." Pamela's eyes bored into Steven's, making him feel as if she was very definitely examining the deepest parts of his mind and looking into the most private portions of his very being. "We wouldn't want to see her stumble, now, would we?"

"No, no, of course not."

Pamela stared at Steven for a few moments more, then curled her lips into a small yet unmistakable smile.

**VVVVV**

"I heard your little lady friend didn't get offed early this morning."

Donovan looked up from the stack of maps and blueprints and papers he was studying, then put down his pencil. He was behind the counter of the bar in the saloon, and he had been making notes on some of the maps and scribbling on a pad of yellow legal paper. "Guess you didn't get your way," he said after a couple of moments.

"Don't get me wrong, Gooder. I didn't want to see your lady friend dead. Or anyone who doesn't absolutely need to be, for that matter."

"Forgive me for saying so, but I really couldn't tell." Donovan looked down on the papers on the counter and started scribbling notes again. "And I find that hard to believe, coming from you, of all people."

"That's not my problem."

Donovan couldn't help but snort derisively. He deliberately avoided making eye contact with Tyler as he spoke. "What do you want?"

"May I see that?" Tyler asked, indicating the pad of legal paper. Donovan stopped writing and slid the pad towards him. He picked it up and read Donovan's notes. "Ruby? The old lady? Are you serious?"

"She wants to help get Julie back. Badly. Besides, she's already established at Security Headquarters; she's the obvious choice."

Tyler dropped the yellow pad back onto the counter. "I'm liking this less and less, Donovan."

"We all gotta do what we all gotta do."

"Like I just said, I don't want anyone dying unnecessarily."

"Neither do I." Mike shifted his weight and finally met Tyler's gaze. "What's your point?"

Tyler leaned up against the bar, opposite the side Donovan was on. "You're committed to getting your lady friend back."

Mike was incredulous, but tried to mask his true feelings. "You know that was always the plan if Martin's assassin didn't do the job the way **you** would have preferred, and if he could somehow convince Diana to send their most important prisoners Earth-side. If he could do that, there's no doubt they'll be sending Julie down, and that will be our best chance to get her back."

"I said this to you when we first talked about it with your lizard buddy, and I'll say it again now: I think that's a fool's play."

"At this point, Tyler, I don't care about what you think."

Tyler was undeterred. "Haven't you ever considered that this may all be a trap, with your lady friend as the bait?"

"What?"

"Your friend E.T. may not be as trustworthy as you might think he is."

"And why do you say that? He's done more for us – for me – than you ever have."

"It's simple: He doesn't bleed red."

"Do you even realize how much of a racist jackass you are? Just listen to yourself!"

"Insult me all you want, Gooder. I really don't care. But you've got to admit that, somewhere inside that stubborn head of yours, there's a voice of doubt that you don't ever want to listen to, 'cause you're afraid of it being right."

Mike let his exasperation show. "Tyler, will you just get to the point of whatever it is you came to talk to me about?"

Tyler straightened up from his lean against the counter. "Just think about this for a second: I think the way you balance the pros and cons of getting your lady friend back is way out of whack. We're risking far too much. What we're gaining in return, I'm not really sure."

"Julie's our leader. We have to get her back. And we'll get her back, no matter what it takes."

"Even if we get her back from the lizards, I'm not sure if that's what you would call a success. For all we know, that might be exactly what **they** want to happen."

"Why would the Visitors want us to take Julie back? That doesn't make much sense."

"Damn it, Gooder, you never used to be this stupid." Tyler sighed. "I guess all it takes for you is a pretty blonde girl. I should've made the connection earlier. Your ex, she was a blonde too, right?"

Donovan reached out to grab Tyler by the collar, but the older man moved more quickly and sidestepped, grabbing and then twisting Mike's arm as he pinned it on the counter. Ham applied some torque on Mike's arm, discouraging Donovan from further acts of impulsive violence.

"So quick to get all hot and bothered," Tyler said. "Just one little comment, and you're flying off the handle." He eased off the pressure he exerted on Donovan's arm. "Ready to cry 'uncle'?"

"Alright," Donovan said. "You got me."

Tyler let go of Donovan's arm, then leaned against the counter again. "I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar she's been converted. They've had her for more than three weeks now – almost a month – and that's a long time. The lizards now only need some way for her to find her way back to us, and this sounds like the perfect opportunity for them to plant her."

Donovan looked at him uncertainly. "Donovan, when are you going to start using your head? Obviously we've changed addresses, so the only way they can get your lady friend to us is if they arrange it so that we actually take her back from them. She obviously doesn't know where we are; neither does your lizard buddy. So 'rescuing' her is the only way to get her where they want her, so they can use her.

"I very seriously doubt she's worth the price in blood that we **will** shed just to get her back.

"And that's the long-range play. Personally, I think the quick-hitting call is the better one."

"Do tell."

"It's simple: The lizards dangle your fearless former leader out, you try to get her back, then boom! The trap closes, and you're all dead. They get you all, or as many of you as possible, together all at one place at one time. You make it real easy for them to pull the kill switch on you, and it's game over.

"And all for a cute little blonde who's better off dead anyway."

"You know, it's funny how now you're talking about worrying about casualties," Mike said, subtly shifting the direction of the conversation, if only to stop himself from wanting to hit Tyler square in the mouth. "Aren't you the one who always tells me that casualties are a part of war?"

"Absolutely. But tell me when I ever said that lives were expendable." Tyler waited for Mike to reply, but saw that no retort was forthcoming. "If you or any of the people in your outfit ever thought that... well, I think I can 'blame the media' for that."

Tyler walked towards the exit, feeling the daggers that Donovan was staring right into his back. "That's right, Gooder," he thought. "Get angry. At least it'll get you thinking a little straighter about all this." As he reached the swinging saloon doors, he turned to face the ex-cameraman. "I hope you're right about this play, Gooder. Whether or not this reckless plan of yours works and we get her back, whatever blood we shed is going to be on your hands.

"I hope you understand that, and accept that."

Tyler then pushed the saloon doors aside and left, leaving Mike alone with the voices of doubt.

**VVVVV**

"Daniel."

"Brian, you wanted to see me?"

"Indeed." Brian smiled warmly at Daniel, then gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk. They were in Brian's modest office at Earth Security Headquarters. "Please, have a seat."

Daniel's smile wavered for a moment. "Uh oh," he thought to himself. "That's almost never good, whenever the boss man tells you to have a seat in his office." As he took the proffered chair he tried to read Brian's face. "Uh," he started to say. "Have I done something -"

"Daniel, my friend, how do you like your job?"

_Well, that's a bit unexpected._

"Uh, I like it. Actually," Daniel rubbed the back of his neck nervously before continuing, "actually, I love my job. A lot."

Brian looked at him for a moment. "Shit," Daniel thought. "Damn aliens are impossible to get a read on."

A smile started to crease Brian's handsome features. "I'm pleased to hear that. I will be just as pleased to report the same to Steven and Diana. Your dedication and willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty are, frankly, amazing."

"I just want to do a good job."

"And you do. Clearly." Brian opened a drawer and withdrew an ornate crystalline box. "Do you remember the first time you saw one of these?"

"How could I forget? That was when you told me I was being promoted to your second-in-command!"

"I'm pleased that you remember." Brian leaned forward and placed the crystalline box on his desk, easily within Daniel's reach. "Take it. It's for you."

Daniel tried to maintain his cool, but found it impossible to completely contain his excitement. He looked at the box. It was completely transparent, but the various cuts on the crystalline material broke up the image of its contents into random spots of colors and shapes, making it virtually impossible to identify what was inside. All Daniel could see were various spots of black, white and red. He scooped up the box and opened it.

Inside the box was a card made of what felt like plastic. It was a little larger than a credit card or a driver's license, and a bit thicker. Daniel fished it out of the container, looking with fascination at the Visitor markings on it. The card felt completely smooth to his fingers, and it had an unexpected heft to it, a good deal heavier than a credit card. On one side of the card, on its lower right corner, was a square picture of Daniel, with his full name and title in English beneath it in tiny type:

Daniel Bernstein, Chief Human Security Liaison, Southern California Region_. _All Access. No Curfew Restriction.

"You have been promoted again, my friend. Consider this your reward for apprehending the rebel leader and killing her compatriot several weeks ago." Brian rose, extending his right hand out to Daniel.

Daniel virtually leapt out of his chair to shake Brian's hand. "Brian... I don't know what to say-"

"No words are necessary, my friend," Brian smiled. When Daniel finally stopped shaking his hand, Brian reached into his uniform. "I almost forgot to give you this."

Daniel recognized it as one of those special Visitor keys that fit in special receiver units incorporated into some doorways at Security Headquarters. He had seen these keys only rarely, and only the highest-ranking staff carried them.

"Now **I'm** one of them!" he thought excitedly.

"This key gives you access to most of Earth Security Headquarters. Only some offices, mine and Steven's included, as well as a couple of large rooms beneath the building which are designated 'Strictly Visitors Only' areas, will not be accessible with this key.

"You can access the communications center, the security center, even the prisoner holding area. You are now the most powerful human in the Los Angeles area in our employ, and are third in command here at Security Headquarters."

"Thank you, Brian!"

"You have earned it. You have earned everything." Brian shook Daniel's arm again, then sat in his chair. "Of course, these extra privileges bring with them some extra responsibilities."

"Whatever you need, Brian, I'm ready!"

"I know that about you, Daniel." Brian smiled. "I know how enthusiastic you are, how hungry you are to have a chance to prove yourself, after a lifetime's worth of being doubted.

"That's why I did not hesitate for one moment to nominate you to be completely in charge of Security Headquarters for the next four days." He leaned forward and lowered his voice, speaking almost conspiratorially. "The following information is Top Secret; do not tell anybody about this. Not your parents, not your friends."

"Absolutely."

"Due to some classified developments aboard the Mother Ship that occurred very early this morning, Diana has deployed me to visit several Mother Ships all over the United States to oversee various security and intelligence operations."

"You're going out of town? Will you be in contact with us here?"

"Unfortunately, I will be out of touch until my return to Los Angeles. Don't be alarmed, though. Steven will remain in the area. He will be available to you should you need anybody to consult. He is an officer of the highest caliber, and he has expressed his enthusiasm about working with you directly."

"Why are you going out of town, while he's staying in Los Angeles? Seems to me that he should be the one going to those other Mother Ships in other cities, since he's the senior officer."

"Privileges of rank, my friend. He recommended that I travel, while he remained on the Los Angeles Mother Ship to oversee several key security issues. As Chief of Visitor Security, it is a logical decision.

"In fact, one of those key security issues is a critical prisoner transfer from the Mother Ship down to Security Headquarters. You will help coordinate this very important operation and will work with Steven. He will handle the operation from the Mother Ship side, while you will prepare Security Headquarters to receive those prisoners. Once the transport has touched down, the weight of responsibility will be off your shoulders, and Steven will take over command of the entire operation."

"Sounds like an important job."

"It **is** an important job. Which is why you will be in charge of things here while I am gone."

"When is this prisoner transfer going to happen?"

"Tomorrow night, at 2100 Hours, right after curfew."

Daniel felt absolutely giddy. "Thank you so much, Brian. I won't let you down!" He stood up and reached out to shake Brian's hand again, his left hand clutching his new badge and access key.

Brian rose and shook Daniel's hand again with a smile. "I know." After the vigorous handshake, he clasped his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. "Now, I'm giving you the rest of the day off. Enjoy, and come back tomorrow, knowing you will be completely in charge here for the next four days."

A final handshake, then Daniel left Brian's office. He was so excited he was almost running as he got to his car, a bright red Ford Mustang. It was one of the first things he bought with his salary as Brian's unit's second-in-command. As he got in and belted up, he took out his cell phone and dialed.

"Hey. Mags! It's Daniel!

"Guess what! I got another promotion!

"What?

"Fuck yeah, I'm excited!

"Hey, listen, I'm on my way to pick you up.

"Curfew? Hey, curfew doesn't affect me! Isn't that fucking awesome?

"I'll tell you all about it, right after we party!

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm on my way, baby!"

**VVVVV**

"I don't like this, Gooder," Ham Tyler said.

"What would you like?"

Mike Donovan led Ham Tyler down a garbage-filled alley. The cacophony of downtown Los Angeles, a discordant symphony composed of honking horns, engine noises from myriad motor vehicles, sirens from fire trucks and police cars and ambulances, and the occasional enticements to buy wares from sidewalk vendors, made it difficult to pick up auditory clues of possible traps. So both men were hyper-vigilant despite their banter.

"Daytime meetings without disguises in the middle of a very public area are definitely not a good idea. Especially if you're tops on the lizards' most wanted list. You're long on guts, but short on common sense."

"You worried for me, or for yourself?"

"Guess which one of us is actually on that most wanted list."

Mike Donovan couldn't help but chuckle. "I didn't know you cared so much." He looked at his wristwatch. 9:17 am. "We've got to go to this meeting. Martin's got information for us."

"I'm not gonna say it," Tyler said, nevertheless conveying his disapproval. "I just hope we're not walking straight into a trap."

"If it is a trap, I owe you a beer."

Tyler snorted, which elicited another chuckle from Donovan. He picked up his pace to close the distance to Mike, who had stopped at the end of the alley. Donovan gestured for Ham to take the lead. Tyler looked in all possible directions for figures clad all in red. He found none.

"Which way, Gooder?"

"It's just around the corner to the right, and down the block a bit. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall called Chow at Tsao's. It's easy to miss."

Ham walked out of the alley with Donovan close behind. He had operated in downtown Los Angeles many times before, but lacked a true native's intimate knowledge of the city. Normally that lack of close experience wouldn't have bothered him in the least, but ever since the day the Visitors arrived, life for Ham Tyler distilled itself down to one simple sentence:

There is no "normal" anymore.

That, more than anything, explained his extreme discomfort in working with Michael Donovan.

In their past dealings, Donovan was often nothing more than an inconvenient irritant, a journalist who did his job with an unswerving dedication to uncovering the truth in anything he pointed his cameras at. For anyone as deeply connected to the clandestine world of the CIA as Hamilton Tyler was, a person like Donovan was an obstacle, often even an adversary. The shadowy world that Tyler inhabited thrived on secrets, which ran counter to Donovan's unblinking devotion to the truth.

Now, though, they were allies, however reluctantly, united against a common foe.

Except that Donovan insisted on also being allied to one of **them**.

Presently, he looked to his right and saw "Chow at Tsao's" painted on the window of an otherwise nondescript establishment on 5th Street. He let Donovan enter first, then followed him inside.

An elderly Chinese man from behind the counter, evidently the one-man crew of cook, waiter, and busboy for the tiny eatery, approached them. Wordlessly he led Donovan towards a door hidden from easy public view by a refrigerator. The old man opened the door, and Donovan nodded at him before going into the long hallway beyond. Tyler ignored the Chinese man and followed Mike.

At the end of the hall was a door that was slightly ajar. Donovan peered inside, then entered.

"Martin," he greeted.

"Donovan, Tyler."

Tyler stayed silent, instead giving the Visitor a slight nod. He walked around the room, looking out the windows for any tell-tale signs of a trap being set outside, while keeping his ears tuned to the conversation between Donovan and Martin.

"Donovan," Martin began, "Julie's going to be moved down from the Mother Ship."

"We heard."

Martin was taken aback. "You have? From whom, if I may ask?"

"You know better than to ask," Tyler suddenly interrupted as he continued his inspection of the room.

"Can't tell you," Donovan said more diplomatically. "Let's just say this source is reliable, and that the information always comes at a very high price."

Martin went silent for a moment, thinking. "'Loose lips sink ships,' I believe, is how the saying goes," he said finally with a hint of a knowing smile. He quickly adopted a more serious expression. "You probably already know that Julie's supposed to be arriving at Earth Security Headquarters at 2100 hours tonight."

"Yeah, we know."

"So what do you need me for?"

"Well," Donovan hedged, "we do still need information on how to best penetrate Security Headquarters' defenses. That fancy new laser fence you guys put up, especially."

"I had anticipated this," said Martin as he reached into his uniform. He withdrew a USB thumb drive and handed it to Donovan. "All the information you need is on here. Maps, the building plans, electrical schematics, everything you might need. The data were originally encrypted, but have been decrypted and compressed so that any computer with a USB connector can access the information quite easily." Then Martin reached into his uniform again, this time retrieving a Visitor access key. "I thought whomever you use might be needing this as well."

"We'll put these to good use," Donovan said as he thrust the thumb drive and the key deep into his hip pocket.

"So, now that you have this information, do you at least have a rough plan as to how you're going to recapture Julie?"

"We do have ideas. I'll let Ham explain."

Tyler didn't look at Martin as he spoke, instead continuing his systematic inspection and surveillance of the room and the streets and alleys outside. "Where will your shuttle be landing?"

"I will arrange for the shuttle to land on Pad #1, which is approximately twenty five yards from the side entrance to the Headquarters' main building. This side entrance faces west, just to be clear. The prisoner receiving center is most accessible from this side entrance."

"Good," Tyler said. "How are you going to move the prisoners from the shuttle?"

"They will be mobile and under their own power. I don't know if Julie or anybody else will be mildly sedated or otherwise be under chemical influence."

"Drugged?" Donovan asked.

"To keep them from trying to escape," Tyler suggested.

"If they have been drugged, it should be obvious as soon as you see them," said Martin. "Though in Julie's case, she may not even need to be drugged. Conversion is very stressful on its own, and it takes a long time to recover from the process."

"Why should it matter if they've been drugged?"

"Gooder, you gotta think before you ask questions," said Tyler, now looking out the window, still scanning for signs of a trap. "If they've been drugged, they'll be moving a bit slower, and if they're walking slower than what you might expect that's going to affect our timing." Martin nodded, which Tyler saw in his peripheral vision. "And, as always, timing's going to be everything in this op." He addressed Martin again. "Even if you've got the prisoners under the influence you're not going to just have them walk from the shuttle to the building. What kind of security are we looking at?"

"The typical security detail is to have two guards flanking a prisoner, and a third guard walking behind them with his weapon drawn covering the prisoner." Martin thought for a moment. "I might be able to wield enough influence over Diana to allow me to take Julie into Security Headquarters myself, instead of doing things by the usual procedure."

"That will make things a hell of a lot easier."

"Might I suggest something?" Martin asked Tyler.

"I'm listening."

"Who is your best marksman?"

"Tyler probably is," Donovan offered, then suddenly wished he hadn't. "Wait a sec. We're not going to kill you to get Julie back! That's out of the question."

"It won't be a kill shot, if Mr. Tyler is as good a marksman as you believe he is," Martin said, a grim smile on his face. He turned to Ham. "Mr. Tyler?"

"Don't tempt me," Ham replied.

"No way we're gonna do that!"

"Mike, it's absolutely essential. It's too risky to try to shoot two guards flanking Julie. If your marksman only has to hit one target, you reduce the chance of accidentally hitting Julie by fifty percent. Another marksman can concentrate on the guard covering Julie's rear."

"Gooder, he's right," Ham said. For the first time since he entered the room, he looked at Martin. "Where do you want it?"

Martin pointed to his right leg "If you can hit my sidearm holster's thigh strap, you'd have my utmost respect for your skill." He looked at Tyler, trying to read the man's face for any reaction. He was amazed at how well the man could control his emotions so that they didn't show. "Well, Mr. Tyler?"

"Sounds like a good enough suggestion. Change your mind yet, Gooder?"

"I don't like it, but if you both think it's a good idea-"

"We have to do what must be done," Martin said.

"Right." Tyler joined Martin and Donovan in the middle of the room.

"Here's the plan, then..."


	12. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

_Inasmuch as the instantaneous flight_

_Had scattered them asunder o'er the plain,_

_Turned to the mountain whither reason spurs us,_

_I pressed me close unto my faithful comrade,_

_And how without him had I kept my course?_

Mike Donovan yawned as he stood within the train car. This was just one of perhaps two dozen train cars on the abandoned movie lot that the L.A. Resistance had refurbished into sleeping quarters. Many of his comrades were in the same train car, milling around and trying to defuse the tension that hung in the air.

He didn't sleep very well the night before, and now, just hours after the daytime meeting with Martin and a couple of hours' worth of intense planning with Tyler and a few others, he felt as though he was at the absolute limit of his physical endurance. Mike tried, but he couldn't remember the last time he had a good night's sleep. Guilt continued to be a persistent bedfellow, despite Ham and Ruby's separate admonitions to drop the burden of responsibility for Julie's capture. No matter what they or anyone else had told him, there was no escaping the thought that if only he had gone back for her in the medical center, if only he hadn't allowed Robert Maxwell and Elias Taylor to dissuade him, Julie would never have been forced to go through the hell that Diana had forced her to suffer through the better part of the last month.

He looked at his watch. "3:00 pm," he muttered to himself before yawning again. "Only six more hours before they bring her down from the Mother Ship."

A comforting hand settled on his shoulder. Mike turned around, and Father Andrew Doyle greeted him. "Another rough night last night?"

Mike gave him a wan smile and shook the priest's hand. "Looks like Farber's running late," he said, deflecting the conversation away towards a more universal concern. The last thing he wanted was for his own private anguish to be the focus of everyone's attention.

As if on cue, Chris Farber stepped into the car, two rather large satchels slung over each shoulder and with his olive green military-issue jacket bursting at the seams with ammunition clips of various types and sizes. Farber also had two M16A4s slung around his right shoulder.

He walked through the group of resistance fighters, distributing ammunition according to the weapons each person carried and presented to him. Mike couldn't help but admire the fact that, despite the variety of weapon types carried by the group, Farber never had to tell anyone he didn't have the appropriate ammo on him. The man was definitely a consummate professional, despite his apparently laid-back demeanor.

Farber eventually made his way to him, dutifully slapping a few clips for his own M16A assault rifle into his waiting hand. "Well, here's your new ammo. Stuff rips right through their armor."

"Ham came through," Donovan said.

"He always does."

**VVVVV**

Ham Tyler walked with deliberately heavy and noisy steps through the train car that served as one of the all-female dormitories, listening to the clink of objects being placed down onto a metal tabletop. Most times he walked silently, like a predator stalking its prey; stealth was a useful skill in what used to be his line of work. Presently, though, he didn't want to surprise the person he was on his way to meet. He was heading towards the restroom cabins in the middle of the car. The one on the right side of the aisle was the one he was interested in.

The door was open, allowing him a peek into the cabin from way down the aisle. He saw Ruby Engels seated in front of the mirror, carefully applying the makeup which completely obscured her real features. She already had her wig, eyeglasses and cleaning lady uniform on, and now she was dabbing powder on her cheek. He waited at the doorway for about half a minute, admiring the effectiveness of the disguise.

"Are you as good as your makeup?" he finally asked. He walked into the cabin and took the seat to Ruby's left.

"The 'New Yorker' said my Nurse in 'Romeo and Juliet' was the best since Edith Evans," she said with pride.

"I saw Dame Edith do that."

"_You_did?" she asked, surprised.

Tyler nodded. "In London, a long time ago."

"Why, you're not as primitive as I thought you were."

The unexpected revelation, for whatever reason, seemed entirely credible to Ruby. Maybe it was the earnest tone he adopted as he spoke to her. Maybe it was just the way his eyes shone as he revealed that tiny tidbit of information about himself. He could have been lying, but it didn't sound or feel like a lie to her. Instead, Tyler's revelation instantly made her rethink her assumptions about the man seated close to her. She decided to let her guard drop completely, and she found herself surprised yet again at how completely at ease she felt despite this man's fearsome reputation.

Tyler had snorted at her last comment and raised his eyebrows, making Ruby smile as she looked back at the mirror. "Don't be afraid to laugh if you feel like it," she teased, making him ease up a little and rewarding her with a small grin. "Well, that's a start," she beamed.

Ham then reached into a pocket inside his black leather coat, drawing a foot-long wrench. He put it down on the tabletop. "Oh!" Ruby said as she looked at the tool, looking so out of place amongst her complement of makeup brushes and bottles and powder palettes. "Props."

"The wrench is a little ugly, but it'll do the job," Ham instructed, who then tapped his nape. "To the base of the skull," indicating the ideal target that Ruby had to aim for in using the wrench.

Ruby stopped applying her makeup and put her hands on her lap, looking at Tyler intently. "What happened to you, Mr. Tyler?" she asked, searching his face for any clues, any hints as to why this really likable man seemed determined to hide everything about himself, including whatever emotions she knew he was feeling at any given moment. "How did you become someone so dangerous?"

Tyler's gaze fell to the floor for a moment, then fixed itself on her again. "You make it back safely, I'll tell you the story of my life," he promised, after a few moments of contemplation.

"I have a hunch that's worth coming back for," she joked.

Ham couldn't help but let a small smile break through. He fully appreciated the risk Ruby had volunteered – no, insisted! – on taking, and he admired the old woman's bravery and grace under extreme stress. And he found himself wondering, yet again, about the galvanizing effect the thought of recapturing this Juliet Parrish had on Ruby, Donovan, and this entire group.

Maybe there was a reason all these people thought so highly and felt so much for the seemingly ordinary young woman after all.

Tyler then reached into his jacket again, this time withdrawing a walkie-talkie. He switched it on, checking that it was on the correct channel and amplitude level, then turning it back off to conserve the battery's power. He placed the radio on the tabletop, then reached one last time into his jacket. He put a sizable wad of plastic explosive pre-wired with an attached electronic signal receiver and a small remote detonator next to the radio. "On my signal, you pull the plug. Blow up the compound's power supply and turn off the lights."

Ruby nodded, continuing to apply her makeup.

"This whole operation's staged around you."

"A star at last!" Ruby laughed playfully. She stopped dabbing on her cheek, gave herself a final critical look in the mirror, then carefully placed the items Tyler had put on the tabletop into her wash bucket. She covered up them up with a pile of dirty rags, then stood.

Tyler touched her gently on the shoulder as she stood. "Did Donovan give you that Visitor key?"

Ruby patted her hip pocket and withdrew the key. "He sure did, sonny," she said with her crone's smile, and her voice pitched up for effect.

Tyler suppressed an amused chuckle, then smiled at Ruby. "Already in character. You would've given Dame Edith a run for her money."

Ruby smiled for real now, then checked the mirror one final time. She nodded in satisfaction.

"Let's go."

**VVVVV**

"Martin, is Julie Parrish ready for transport?"

Martin bowed his head slightly at Diana. "She is. Lorraine and my staff have had her cleaned up, dressed, and prepared."

"Excellent. Have her brought to the shuttle to Security Headquarters."

"As I had suggested to Steven, I will be responsible for moving her myself."

"Excellent. What of the other prisoners?"

"Security has already moved them from their holding cells to the shuttle. The rebel leader will be the last to be moved. As soon as we are aboard, we depart for Earth."

"I want you to inform Steven that I am altering the plan," Diana said. "I want him to move the rest of the prisoners after we have transferred Julie to Security Headquarters. It is vital that we keep Julie completely segregated from the other prisoners."

Martin was surprised. "This is a highly irregular deviation from the original plan, Diana. Steven will undoubtedly have questions about the change in arrangements; he may even register a formal protest."

"Never mind. I will contact him myself."

"I am curious. Why the very late change in plan?"

"Normally I leave such matters as mundane prisoner transfers entirely up to Security. However, I will be joining you on the trip down to Security Headquarters."

"Oh," Martin said. "This is completely unexpected. I didn't know you would be joining us."

"This is a critical time in the conversion process schedule. I want to observe Julie closely for the next few hours to properly evaluate our progress with her."

"I see. As you wish, then."

"Excellent. I will see you and Julie at the shuttle in fifteen minutes."

Martin bowed, then left Diana's office. As he walked he reached for his comm link. "Lorraine? Martin. Make Julie ready for immediate transfer to Security Headquarters. I will be there in five minutes."


	13. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

_To course across more kindly waters now_

_my talent's little vessel lifts her sails,_

_leaving behind herself a sea so cruel;_

_and what I sing will be that second kingdom,_

_in which the human soul is cleansed of sin,_

_becoming worthy of ascent to Heaven._

The Visitors' Earth Security Headquarters didn't look like a fortress. Awash in floodlights, it gleamed like a jewel in the night. The blue laser fencing that surrounded parts of its perimeter lent it a sapphire-like aspect.

It was built in the mid-1920s as a wealthy local physician's residence and was said to have been modeled after Michelangelo Buonarotti's own Villa Collazi in Florence. The Tuscan-style villa, built within a grove of old oaks and surrounded by manicured lawns and an exquisite garden, projected opulence and refinement, completely without any garishness or excess. Over the years of its existence, it had transformed from a private mansion to a Roman Catholic novitiate to an exclusive all-girls high school.

Within weeks of the Visitors' arrival, the all-girls high school was relocated (there were persistent rumors that the school's administration only did so under heavy pressure), and the property was leased to the Visitors themselves. Almost immediately, the property and its buildings were refurbished and retrofitted to accommodate Visitor technology. Various computer hardware and their proprietary support systems were installed; communications arrays were put in place; landing pads and refueling stations for the Visitor shuttles were built on the grounds; an armory was built in the basement of what used to be the main mansion and was stocked with the latest Visitor weaponry; also in the basement, a heavily-fortified and fully-equipped prisoner holding and interrogation area was also built. These and other alterations were done, yet completely hidden from public view, to the point that anybody not associated with the Visitors was completely unaware of them.

From the outside, very little had changed in the appearance of the buildings on the property. The only real sign of the Visitors' control and presence there, aside from the omnipresent red-clad Visitor personnel walking about, were the gigantic red flags emblazoned with the Visitors' symbol in black in the center, hung proudly – some would say arrogantly – from myriad flagpoles attached to all of the buildings. But outside the ivy-covered walls of the property, no one knew that this was the one of the most secure Visitor strongholds on the American west coast.

That, in truth, was the reason behind the property's appeal: It was a cloistered environment, secure from the outside, beautiful to look at yet designed to hide itself from interlopers and curious eyes even as it stood in plain sight. In a way, it was consistent with the Visitors' penchant in having two completely distinct faces: There was the beautiful face in full public view, and there was the uglier face hidden away under the mask.

Just days before the local resistance's raid on the Los Angeles Medical Center, a laser fence was installed to augment the stronghold's perimeter security. The laser fence guarded all the entry points into the property, now very strongly discouraging anybody curious to even have a peek through the gates. However, for the most part, the ivy-covered wall, seven feet tall at the sidewalk level outside the property, constituted the property's perimeter defense.

Since Earth Security Headquarters was in the middle of a posh residential district in Sierra Madre, a suburb about twenty miles east of Los Angeles, nobody ever batted an eye at the presence of assorted vehicles parked in the area. The presence of maybe a dozen various pickup trucks and vans parked up and down the block was nothing abnormal at all.

Except, of course, for the fact that these vehicles on this particular evening belonged to the Los Angeles resistance. All of these vehicles had their drivers waiting, crouched away from view with walkie-talkies in their hands. They were waiting, staying alert.

And in one of the vehicles, a For open-bed F-150, Elias Taylor leaned into the driver's window from his place on the bed. "About twenty minutes to go-time," he said quietly.

"I'm just waiting for that fence to go down," Robert Maxwell said.

"Hope we can pull this thing off without a hitch."

"Yeah. Me, too."

Their comrades were already inside the property, hidden amongst the foliage and the shadows.

**VVVVV**

The main building of Security Headquarters was a hive of activity. Uniformed cleaning ladies were working with vacuum cleaners, dusters, glass cleaners, brushes of every type, cleansers of every description. Security troops were marching to their stations, and technical support staff were checking and double-checking their tracking systems and communications equipment.

In the main reception area on the first floor, Daniel Bernstein was looking at a checklist on his Visitor-issued document reader. Helpfully it had the text translated to English. On the top-right portion of its screen was a digital clock; it said, in bright red characters, "20:42."

He was talking to a Visitor Security officer when he felt himself pitch forward, having been bumped by someone behind him. Annoyed, he whirled around, and he saw to see a decrepit old woman in a cleaning lady's uniform looking up at him fearfully.

"Oh, pardon me," she said, immediately dropping her gaze onto the floor.

"Watch where you're going," Daniel snapped. She bent to pick up her bucket, then started to walk away, but then he grabbed her left arm. "Stop." He studied her face intently as she looked up at him again. "Do I know you from someplace?"

She was flustered, but she managed an embarrassed smile. "No," she said finally, a bit of fear in her voice. He continued to stare at her. "I'm just one of the help," she croaked. "Please let me go, sir. I've got more work to do."

Daniel continued to look at her, slightly repulsed at the crone's appearance, yet not able to shake the distinct feeling that he knew who she was. "I guess it's not that important," he said finally. "Carry on."

The old woman bent down again and lifted her bucket, then scurried away.

**VVVVV**

"That was _too_ close," Ruby Engels thought to herself. "Gotta be more careful."

She took a moment to inhale a deep, calming, cleansing breath, then she hurried away from the main reception area with her bucket in hand. She looked back over her shoulder frequently, vigilant for anyone who looked like might be following her.

"I hope nobody sees me," she kept thinking to herself. "There's too much at stake."

Her heart was pounding hard and loud like a giant bass drum in her ears by the time she reached the elevator. Though she didn't look up, she knew what the bilingual sign on one of the walls said – in both English and in the Visitors' native alphabet, it read: "Restricted Area. Access to Designated Personnel Only."

"You used to be so much better than this at keeping your nerve," Ruby chided herself as she put her bucket on the floor by her feet. "This really isn't any different than being on stage; it's all about the performance. Just out of practice, I guess."

She felt for the Visitor access key in her hip pocket, then allowed herself a small smile as she took it out. She pushed it into the receptacle set into the door frame and watched as the door into the elevator slid open. She then picked up her bucket and started to enter the elevator. "Maybe I need the reassurance of having an audience watching me."

She was just about to laugh quietly at her own private musings when a Visitor's voice shocked her back to the present moment. "You!" said a security trooper. "Old woman!"

Ruby's blood froze as she turned around and saw the tall, muscle-bound Visitor Security trooper.

**VVVVV**

Mike Donovan's eyes had long ago adjusted to the darkness. In the shadows afforded by the hedges and trees and foliage near Security Headquarters' main building his comrades were invisible as they busily armed their various weapons. They were spread out at various tactical positions, with some positioned up in the trees and others prone on the ground. The idea was to make it as difficult for the Visitors as possible to fix on any one position once the shots started firing.

Some were positioned strictly to be decoys, to get the Visitors looking the wrong way while the real key hitters took out the important targets.

Donovan marveled at the elegance and logic behind Ham Tyler's plan for this operation. Despite his comfort with the plan, he couldn't deny that he felt the nag of doubt tugging at his soul.

He nudged up against Tyler. "How we doing?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Chris has the archers ready; all our gunners are in position. Just waiting for the go."

Donovan tapped Tyler on the shoulder in acknowledgment. He had a worry weighing on his mind, and he gave voice to it. "I hope Ruby makes it."

"She'll do just fine."

"I shouldn't have let her talk me into this."

"Your timing sucks, Gooder. Hell of a time to let guilt get you back on your senses."

Donovan winced as he admitted just how right Tyler was.

**VVVVV**

Juliet Parrish didn't want to move, but the tug on her arm propelled her forward. She kept her eyes to the floor as she was forced along, watching her feet now encased in black boots take each unwanted step.

She thought idly about how the Visitor woman – her name was Lorraine, if she recalled correctly – had come into her cell and asked her to get up. At first she refused; she was consumed with terror every time those figures in red came in through the sliding doors for her. That was just her automatic reaction to seeing those people in the red uniforms. Then she would look up into their faces, and if she saw Lorraine's she would allow her fear to loosen its desperate clench on her heart. But if she saw not a face but the lowered black mask with the golden helmet...

Juliet closed her eyes and pushed that thought away, refusing to sink into the mire of terror induced by the memories inspired by those figures in red with the gold and black helmets. Memories of being dragged out of her cell and forced into that room with the glass walls and the flashing lights and the swirling clouds of chemicals that rose up to engulf her. Memories of terrors lived and relived. Memories of pain. Memories of the crushing weight of guilt.

Memories of death.

Memories of another woman in red, one she called "Momma."

Juliet looked down on herself and saw she was now wearing the same red uniform.

She shut her eyes again. A different memory now, of warm water cascading over her, of a soft towel on her skin, then of Lorraine telling her to get dressed. Lorraine had handed her the red uniform, complete with the black boots and black cap, and gave her the necessary privacy – an infinitely precious luxury to her – to get dressed.

It was quite strange now, actually, to be wearing clothes again, after who knows how long it had been since she last did. That realization, and the importance that she attached to it, made the experience all the more alien to her.

She opened her eyes and summoned all her courage to look at the Visitor holding her bicep. She had forgotten that he wasn't wearing one of those golden helmets with the black mask; she had been too consumed with fear to take note of his features when he took her from Lorraine, and all she could do was to keep her gaze on the floor even as he fastened his powerful hand on her arm.

The Visitor looked down at her as he pulled her along, and Juliet couldn't help but feel that he was trying to see deep inside her. Despite the desperately uncomfortable feeling of self-consciousness that was threatening to overcome her, she tried to meet his gaze, but she couldn't summon the will to keep her eyes on him. She was somewhat surprised that she sensed no hostility, no malice, from this male Visitor. If anything, she felt something akin to concern, even compassion, from him. She looked down at her feet again.

She didn't know how long they had been walking; she didn't bother to notice how many corridors they walked down, nor how many doors they passed through. But she did notice when they arrived at what clearly was one of the Mother Ship's shuttle docking bays. The sounds of machinery and activity and the din of airlocks opening and closing and the hisses and spits of hydraulics and pneumatic components assaulted her ears the moment the doors into the bay slid open.

The Visitor pulled her towards one of the craft, one with its loading ramp open. Juliet had a sudden recollection of a time when she was ushered out of a similar vehicle, surrounded by what seemed like a dozen of the red-uniformed people holding her tight and with weapons drawn and trained on her. The fear from that long-gone moment flashed like a grease fire at that moment, and she dug her feet into the floor.

But the Visitor holding her was much too strong, and she was forced up the shuttle's loading ramp. She stiffened, frozen like a statue, when she saw the dark-haired woman in red who smiled at her waiting inside the vehicle.

It was _her_, the one whose face was always in her nightmares.

**VVVVV**

Ruby turned around and looked up at the hulking figure in red. "How did you open the elevator? That's strictly off-limits," he boomed down at her. She didn't fail to notice that his right hand was resting on his weapon, ready to draw if necessary.

Her mouth had gone completely dry and her heart felt like it was ready to explode, but somehow Ruby was able to find the right things to say. "Oh," she said with exaggerated slowness. "Well, I have approval."

The Visitor looked at her doubtfully. "They told me to give it a special cleaning," she said to him. "For Steven and Diana. 'Make it spotless,' they said!"

"Let me see your authorization."

Ruby smiled. "Oh, I have it here," she said, thrusting her hands into her pockets. The Visitor's facial expression did not change when she produced nothing. She looked up, as if she was concentrating, then bent down at her bucket. "Oh, it must be down here," she muttered as she made a show of searching the wash bucket.

"Hurry up, old woman," the Visitor said as he stepped towards her.

Without warning, Ruby drew a wash bottle filled with muriatic acid. She shot a few squirts into the Visitor's eyes.

As he staggered in blindness and pain, he bent over at the waist. Ruby saw her opportunity and pulled the wrench Tyler had given her a few hours earlier from the bucket and sent it crashing hard into the Visitor's nape. The forceful, well-placed blow killed the Visitor instantly.

Ruby wasted no time and gathered up her bucket and its spilled contents and activated the elevator. In mere seconds she was descending deep into the bowels of Security Headquarters.

**VVVVV**

Daniel Bernstein paced through the reception hall with the predatory intent of a lion. He scanned the room for one red-and-white-clad figure in particular in amongst the crowd. There were about two dozen women in the cleaning crew all dressed in the same uniform, but the one he was looking for was nowhere to be found.

With a frustrated grunt he approached one of the Security Troopers. "Where's the old woman?"

"Sir?"

"The old woman!" Daniel said impatiently. "The cleaning lady!"

"I have no idea."

Daniel stomped away, never seeing the trooper's look of curiosity fixed on him.

**VVVVV**

Ruby Engels peered out of the elevator car. It was hard for her to see in the subdued lighting in the sub-basement level of Security Headquarters. She tried to listen for any tell-tale signs of unwanted company, but found it impossible to hear beyond the din of the generators, motors, cooling systems, and other machinery.

She stepped out of the elevator and headed towards an array of large electrical control boxes set against the east wall of the building. She rounded a few corners until she saw her first landmark, a spiraling staircase heading towards the building's ground level. Ruby smiled, pleased to see something she was expecting to see. This staircase was going to be her escape route out of the sub-basement level. She continued walking until she found the control boxes, right where she expected them to be. "It's a good thing I paid close attention to Donovan's briefing this afternoon," she thought to herself. "Everything's right where Martin's schematics had them."

Ruby set her bucket down on the floor, then she withdrew the pre-made wad of plastic explosive rigged by Tyler's associate, Chris Farber. She placed the explosive on one of the control boxes, then set herself around a corner about fifteen feet from the control boxes. She then took out the remote control detonator and her walkie-talkie.

She pressed the transmit button and whispered, "I'm in position."

Through the noise of the machinery in the sub-basement she never heard the sound of the elevator doors sliding open.

**VVVVV**

Ham Tyler lowered his night-vision binoculars and touched the ear piece in his left ear, activating his radio. "Okay, Ruby, it's almost here. We can see the shuttle on its way down."

Mike Donovan slid silently next to him. "I hope Ruby makes it."

"She'll do just fine."

Tyler and Donovan both looked back up at the descending Visitor shuttle with their binoculars. "Looks like we've got about a minute," Mike said.

"Everybody ready?"

Mike looked around. Up in the tree above him Maggie Blodgett and Chris Farber were arming their weapons – a crossbow for Maggie, a longbow for Chris – with Teflon-tipped arrows. Sancho Gomez was up there with them, armed with an M4 assault rifle. And in the bushes and up in some of the other trees in the garden, the other resistance fighters were likewise sharpening their focus for the upcoming firefight.

"Looks like we're good."

Tyler nodded, then touched his ear piece again. "Get ready, Ruby. It's almost here."

The Visitor shuttle slowed its descent as it got closer to the landing pad. When it was about thirty meters off the ground, it deployed its landing gear. The shuttle lifted its nose ever so slightly as it continued its landing.

"About twenty seconds," Tyler muttered. Donovan nodded and gave Chris and Maggie a thumbs up, giving them clearance to select their targets.

"Ten seconds," said Tyler as he let go of the binoculars and reached for his SIG Sauer P226 silenced pistol. He silently counted down the seconds, then touched his ear piece. "Okay, Ruby. It's down. Standby for my signal."

Tyler and Donovan watched as spotlights mounted on the main building's roof swung toward the newly-arrived craft on the landing pad. The shuttle's pneumatic systems vented themselves, sending up clouds of condensed vapor with multiple hisses. "Good thing that stuff evaporates quick, or you'd be shooting through a smokescreen," Donovan quipped.

Ham didn't answer, instead raising his pistol so that he was looking down its sights. As he did so, the shuttle's starboard hatch started to open.

"Now hit Martin in the leg, like we planned," Mike said quietly. "When he goes down, that'll be our signal for our guys to open up."

"You know, Gooder, from this distance I can almost cut him in half."

"Anything more than a flesh wound, you get the same."

Tyler couldn't help but smile when he heard the annoyance in Donovan's voice. "Okay, Gooder."

Ham let the brief moment of levity between himself and Donovan breathe for a second or two more, then he refocused once again as the lower portion of the hatch finished its downward motion and settled on the landing pad.

A pair of Security troops stepped from inside the shuttle and positioned themselves at the hatch, one to each side of it, weapons drawn. Seconds later, four more people walked slowly down the ramp in pairs heading for the main building.

Tyler allowed himself a small smile as he saw two blonde heads in the lead. Martin walked beside a small woman whom he kept on his left side, holding her arm. Behind them were two dark-haired Visitors, whom Ham immediately recognized as Steven and Diana. He was tempted to go beyond the parameters of his assigned role and just unload on them – _I might never get a better chance than this_ – but swallowed the impulse.

He had a job to do.

In fact, so much of this operation depended on whether or not he could make a supremely difficult shot.

Though he would have hated to admit it, Tyler felt a spark of genuine respect for Martin at that moment. Martin had a part to play in what was very shortly to unfold – a fairly dangerous part, putting his life and well-being in the hands of someone who had treated him with undisguised disdain – but he seemed completely undaunted about the possibility of something going horribly wrong.

"Looks like E.T. came through," he thought to himself as he re-focused on Martin, shelving all other distracting thoughts away. He watched the Visitor's gait and pace carefully, looked down the sights of his P226, then squeezed the trigger.

Martin fell immediately as he felt the impact of the slug into his thigh. As he fell he dragged Juliet down to the ground with him. He pressed his hand tight on his bleeding leg, applying strong direct pressure in order to stem the bleeding, and he looked with amazement at the fact that Tyler had indeed managed to hit the strap that held his sidearm to his thigh.

Gunfire exploded all around them, and he felt Juliet stir and try to get up. He moved and covered her body with his. The ache in his leg intensified as he slid on top of her, feeling the tendrils of unconsciousness begin to tighten their grip on him.

**VVVVV**

The first to shoot after Martin fell were Maggie and Chris with their bows. Their arrows found Shock Troopers stationed on a balcony overlooking the landing pad and Security troopers guarding the west-facing side entrance into Security Headquarters. When these targets fell, the rest of the Visitors' attentions were diverted towards them.

That's when the gunfire erupted. With their backs turned, the Visitors never had a clue about the rest of the rebel force hidden in the shadows of the garden. The Teflon-tipped ammunition was supremely effective, cutting a swath of death and destruction through the Visitor soldiers and guards.

Tyler picked off target after target, his eyes searching for Diana and Steven. "Damned scaly bitch managed to slither away and hide," he thought. He touched his ear piece. "Lights!"

The booms of muffled explosions from somewhere underground joined the symphony of automatic gunfire and the whooshes of arrows whistling at speed through the nighttime air. At that moment, the entire Visitor compound fell dark, the only light emanating from the muzzles of the rebels' weapons.

The roar of an engine and the screech of protesting tires rose above even the bursts of automatic gunfire, which now had intensified. Tyler looked at the F-150 barreling down the long driveway towards Security Headquarters' main building. The F-150 skidded to a stop next to the west-side entrance, and a shadowy figure clad in black rushed towards the vehicle.

"Gooder, you timed that just perfectly," Tyler thought as he watched Donovan reach for Juliet on the ground, kick Martin in the face, then throw the petite woman onto the bed of the truck. Elias Taylor caught her in midair, then covered her up protectively.

Donovan clambered onto the rear of the bed, banging on the metal to signal Robert Maxwell to gun the motor. Suddenly, someone reached out for his leg and almost dragged him off of the bed of the truck just as it started to speed away. Donovan looked down and saw a Visitor Shock Trooper wrapped around his left leg in desperation. He kicked with his right and pulled himself aboard the truck when the alien finally let go.

As the truck accelerated away past the shuttle on the landing pad, a bright yellow streak of light sped from the shadows of the trees in the garden towards the alien craft. It was a Stinger missile. The Stinger hit the Visitor shuttle, instantly exploding and transforming it into a fiery pile of broken pieces.

**VVVVV**

Diana shielded her eyes from the brightness of the flames and explosions. She looked at Steven, who had joined her just inside the west-side entrance into the main building. She saw Martin sprawled on the ground, bleeding and unconscious just outside the doorway. She looked for another blonde head, but she knew that she would not find the one she wanted. The Earth vehicle that had come and stopped just a few feet away, then left in a huge hurry surely now had repossessed the woman she had once called her "masterpiece."

So much time, so much effort, so much potential... No thanks to this latest fiasco, the fruits of all that work may yet still go to waste.

She didn't bother to disguise her disdain as she said to Steven, "You should be terminated for this blunder."

**VVVVV**

Ruby Engels walked briskly towards the spiral staircase out of the basement level. Thankfully the emergency lights still worked; otherwise, she would have had no choice but to navigate through the semi-darkness. She saw the spiral staircase that would lead her out.

She stopped in her tracks and gasped as a beam of light blinded her.

"So," said the voice of the man holding the Mag-Lite aimed at her face. "You **are** a spy."

Ruby willed herself to sound calm, even though her heart was going so fast it felt like it was going to explode. "Who, me?" she said innocently in her crone's voice. "I was just down here working, when all of a sudden I heard a boom -"

"Nah, nah, nah, nah, you're lying, you're lying!" Daniel Bernstein said. "I saw you!" He reached out and grabbed the back of her head, intent on pulling Ruby by her hair. "You're coming with me."

The wig came off of Ruby's head, and Daniel looked at her again. Ruby saw the unmistakable glint of recognition in his eyes, mixed in with anger. "I do know you!" he said.

"Yes, you do know me."

"You – you were lying to me! Well, what, did you think you could outsmart me, huh? Huh?" He reached for her again. "You're coming with me, and we'll see -"

"And be a hero?"

Daniel hesitated for a moment and looked at Ruby.

"Let me go, Daniel. For your grandpa Abraham."

Daniel shook his head, but Ruby could tell she hit a nerve when she mentioned his grandfather's name. "I've known you all your life. Do you remember all the good times we had? All the smiles, the laughs, we shared together with your grandpa?" She allowed herself to relax a little as she watched Daniel reflect on memories from not so long ago. "You were such a good boy, Daniel. You couldn't change, to be so without... honor."

She shook her head. "I don't believe it."

Ruby took a few cautious steps toward him. Daniel seemed frozen, conflicted by myriad emotions at war with each other. Ruby was emboldened by his inaction.

"Stop," he said suddenly, his arm moving towards his sidearm.

Ruby had one hand on the spiraling banister, one foot on the bottom step. She looked at him, then took another couple of steps up the staircase.

"Stop," he said again, more insistently this time.

Ruby paused and looked at him again, then continued climbing the stairs.

"I'm warning you," Daniel said with anger rising in his voice. He drew his sidearm. "I said stop!"

The shot echoed inside the basement level, hurting Daniel's ears. For a moment he was blinded by the flash of his Visitor sidearm, its energy discharge much brighter than his Mag-Lite.

He heard the thuds of dead weight impacting on the metal spiral staircase, and felt the lump settle at his boots.

He never looked down at the corpse of Ruby Engels as he stepped over her to report to his superiors.


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

_If I to hear thy words be worthy, tell me_

_If thou dost come from Hell, and from what cloister._

_Through all the circles of the doleful realm,_

_Responded he, have I come hitherward;_

_Heaven's power impelled me, and with that I come._

"Gooder!" Ham Tyler was seated in the passenger seat of the Chevrolet Colorado pickup, and he banged on the outside of his door as he called out to Donovan. The ex-cameraman was one of several rebels milling about the barn which was re-purposed into an infirmary. "Gooder!" Tyler yelled again, now waving a hand at Chris Farber, in the driver's seat, to flash the headlights.

Donovan finally heard Tyler. He walked towards the Colorado's right side. "You guys just got back?"

"Had to make sure them scaly bastards weren't gonna be followin' us," Farber drawled. "I hope y'all were just as careful."

"Don't worry. We did everything according to plan." Donovan looked at Tyler. "What do you want?"

"How's your little lady friend?"

Donovan hesitated for a moment before answering. "She looks fine to me. She's being examined right now."

"Of course she looks fine to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Never mind. But you didn't really answer my question."

"Well, what kind of answer are you looking for?"

"I want straight goods, Donovan. No bullshit. How is she behaving? She say anything?"

"No bullshit?"

"Always."

Donovan sighed. "What would you expect? You know a lot more about these sorts of things; she's been through a major trauma."

"No shit, Sherlock. You still haven't told me anything. How is she behaving? She acting strange at all?"

"How would you be were you in her position?"

Tyler raised an eyebrow. "Won't ever happen." He looked at Donovan, and even through the gloom of night the ex-cameraman couldn't miss Tyler's intensity. "I thought you said no bullshit. How was she on the ride back here? How is she around you people?"

Donovan ran a hand through his thick brown hair, then sighed. "She seemed... scared, a bit freaked out, really tense. I would've thought she'd be happy to get away, but -" He pounded the truck's windshield with a gloved fist. "That bitch!"

"Yeah," Tyler said, knowing precisely who the target of Donovan's epithet was. "I thought I had a shot at her, too; scaly bitch lives a charmed life, I'd say."

"Donovan," Elias Taylor called out. Mike turned around and gave Elias a small wave. "Hey man, come over here for a minute."

"I'll be right there."

"Gooder," Tyler said, reaching for Donovan's arm to get his attention. "Watch her close, as soon as you get the chance to see her. Don't ever let your guard down. We don't know what we're up against here. I know it's against every instinct you have, but be suspicious of your little lady friend. DO NOT trust her, especially early on.

"It just might save your life. And all of ours."

Donovan said nothing as he listened to Tyler's advice, then went on his way to join Elias.

Tyler watched Donovan walk away, then looked at Chris Farber with both eyebrows raised. "You think he's gonna listen?" asked Chris.

Ham thought about the question for a moment. "He's a big boy. Some things he's just going to have to learn for himself. Come on," he said, tapping the pick-up's roof. "We've got gear to clean and stash, and a meeting with Intel in a few hours."

**VVVVV**

Donovan heard Chris Farber start the truck's engine and drive away. Tyler's words had struck a few raw nerves, but he knew better than to show a reaction. _I don't need any more aggravation._

"What's going on?" he asked Elias, then saw that Harmony Moore had joined the small group of rebels that had gathered outside the makeshift infirmary. "How's Julie?"

"Oh, she's a little shook up right now. We took her vitals; her pulse and BP are a little high, but nothing too serious. Probably just the anxiety."

"Has she said anything to you guys?" asked Elias. "She talk about her time up there?"

"She's not talking, really, just saying yes or no to questions," Harmony said. She looked at everyone around her, then, sensing the rising despair in the group, she smiled broadly. "Hey, guys, don't worry. She'll be a-okay, good as new. She just needs a little bit of time. You'll see!"

The gathering of rebels engaged in hopeful murmurs. Harmony kept smiling. "That's the spirit!"

Donovan approached Harmony. "Harmony, can I go see Julie?" he asked in a low voice.

"Right now? Um-" Harmony hesitated. "Well, Maggie's still with her. I think she wants to talk to her first, you know, one-on-one, woman-to-woman?" Donovan looked at her doubtfully. "Don't worry, Mike. It has nothing to do with you. We – Maggie and I – we just think that it might be smart to, you know, make sure Julie has a chance to talk about things that only women might get." She winked at Donovan, never losing her smile. "Just be patient. You'll see her soon enough."

Mike nodded. "Be patient," he thought to himself. "That's always been the hardest part."

**VVVVV**

"God," Maggie Blodgett thought to herself. "She's been through hell."

She held Julie's arm as the smaller, younger woman stepped out of the pile of Visitor-issued clothing at her feet. She winced as she saw the bruises on Julie's arms and knees, wondering but not really wanting to know how she had gotten them. Maggie also saw the wound from the Visitor weapon Julie took on her right hip; it had healed, but it left an ugly scar and gave Julie a bit of a limp. The protruding lines of Julie's ribs almost made Maggie gasp, but she held back, careful to not betray any outward reaction to Julie. She knew that that wasn't something Julie needed right now.

"Maybe you'd like to shower, freshen up?" she suggested, even as she wrapped an over-sized towel around Julie. "It might make you feel better."

Julie looked at her for a long moment, then she dropped her gaze to the floor. She nodded slowly.

Maggie smiled reassuringly at Julie, then led her towards the makeshift shower Mark and some of the other rebels had built inside the barn. She stroked Julie's hair gently, trying to convey her compassion. "It's okay, Julie. You're with friends now."

She didn't let go of Julie until the younger woman was inside the shower. "The left knob is for the hot water; the right one's for cold," Maggie said. Julie looked at her, a silent plea in her eyes. Maggie at first didn't understand what Julie was trying to communicate, until she nodded and turned away. Julie said nothing as she unwrapped the towel and draped it onto Maggie's forearm. Without looking, Maggie closed the door into the shower, and as she started to walk away she wondered why she wasn't hearing any water falling. "Julie? Anything wrong?"

She waited maybe three or five seconds, then heard the tell-tale sound of the shower working. Maggie bit her lip, then sighed. "They hurt her **bad**," she thought.

Though she had no idea about the specifics of what Julie had gone through – Donovan either didn't know much about what was happening to her, or he chose not to disclose any details to the group – Maggie sensed that perhaps the aftermath of the experience might be just as bad.

Or maybe it was even worse, if that was possible.

"It's one thing to live a nightmare," Maggie thought. "It's worse when you **keep on **living it."

Her mind went back to when she lost her husband. She and Jesse Blodgett were both pilots. They met each other back in high school, drawn to each other by a shared love of aircraft and of the open sky. They got married soon after both finished flight school several years later.

Together they shuttled tourists from Orange County to Catalina Island and back again. It was a beautiful life they shared with each other, like living out the best of dreams. Problems, such as they were, were mere pebbles on the road they traveled together. They both felt that, together, there was nothing they couldn't accomplish, nothing they couldn't overcome.

Then there was the crash.

Just like that, the dream she shared with Jesse was over. In place of the dream was the nightmare of going on without him.

For many months after his death, Maggie lived her life as if on autopilot. She tried to continue the charter service, but without Jesse it was just a business. When before she loved flying to and from Catalina, after Jesse's death it was just something that needed to be done, a chore that became more tedious the more she had to do it. Where before she loved being up in the sky, free as a bird, after Jesse's death she was a prisoner of the past, the blue expanse taunting her and reminding her daily of her loss. She grew to hate aircraft, the wild open skies. Before long, she sold the charter business and swore to never fly, or love, ever again.

Not knowing exactly what happened to Jesse – how or why his plane plowed into the cold, merciless Pacific – forced Maggie's mind to fill in the blanks. The singular nightmare of going on without her beloved became an unwanted nightly ritual. Images of all the possibilities visited Maggie almost every night; the trauma of losing her husband spawned myriad traumas, a cycle of the most vicious kind.

"Post-traumatic stress syndrome," thought Maggie. "What a bitch."

It wasn't until almost two and a half years after Jesse's fatal crash that Maggie was finally able to free herself from the shackles losing him had imposed on her. She moved north, away from Orange County, and started a new life. She had learned enough about aircraft that she became interested in repairing and maintaining them. She took courses in aviation mechanics, and when she finished her schooling she qualified and took a job with Los Angeles County as a helicopter mechanic. Piecing her life back together was difficult, but she was able to do it.

"Time heals all wounds," she would tell herself often.

"Eventually."

And indeed they do. Even for her. In the months since the Los Angeles resistance group had been together, Maggie found herself more receptive to the idea that perhaps, at last, she was ready to move on from Jesse. Any guilt – silly, really, she would tell herself – she may have felt subconsciously about "going on a different flight plan" had melted away to nothingness.

In Mark McIntyre, the ex-police officer, she found someone she could respect without reservation, someone who could make her smile and laugh, a person with whom she simply just felt very safe. What made things even more beautiful was Maggie's sense that the feelings she had were mutual. But more than anything else, Mark made her feel an emotion that served to light the way, even when things seemed darkest.

Hope for something better in the future.

And, perhaps, even love.

But before they could get to that idyllic possibility together, they had to surmount other powerful emotions that threatened to rip apart their growing relationship at the seams. Jealousy may be a raw and primal expression of love and desire, but it could also eat away at the glue that held all human relationships together.

Jealousy left unchecked could murder trust along the way.

With a sigh, she knelt down and picked up the various items of Visitor clothing that Julie had worn, carefully folding and sorting them. "I'll ask her later whether or not we ought to keep these," she thought. "Better yet, ask Donovan. They look just like regular Visitor uniforms to me; we might be able to use these later."

She stood up and smoothed down the folds of the red uniform. "Maybe she's hungry," Maggie thought as she looked towards the shower. "Julie, I'm gonna fix us a couple of sandwiches," she called out. "I'll be back in a few minutes." She listened for a response, but was not surprised to not hear one. "I'll turn the radio on, just so you won't feel like your all alone while I'm gone, OK?"

Maggie shook her head as she listened again for a response that didn't come, then walked towards a small FM radio. She moved the tuner, searching for an easy listening station that she thought Julie might like, then settled on KOST 103.5.

"I'll be right back."

**VVVVV**

This is how it feels to be Julie Parrish, right now:

You are standing under the jets of the shower, your head bowed down, your eyes closed. Warm water is pelting you from above, and you can't help but think that this is a pleasant sensation. You breathe in through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth, making yourself relax the easiest way you know how.

You hear the tall blonde woman's voice, muffled as it was, through the sound of the water falling. She said something about "sandwiches," which suddenly reminds you of how hungry you are. As if on cue, you feel the rumbling in your stomach.

It occurs to you that it seems like a very strange feeling. All those countless days – probably weeks, months maybe? You just don't know for sure – locked up and tortured, and though you were never given anything good to eat or drink, you don't ever remember feeling that tell-tale physical sensation.

Then again, you were experiencing things that were far worse, far more severe, far more painful, than mere hunger pangs. The thought makes you shudder despite the warm water pelting your skin, and you shut your eyes more tightly and shake your head trying to push those thoughts away.

You tell yourself to concentrate on your breathing. _In through the nose, then slowly out the mouth. In. Out. In. Out. _You do as your mantra says. _ In through the nose, then slowly out the mouth. In. Out. In. Out. _It always helps you calm down, breathing this way. _In through the nose, then slowly out the mouth. In. Out. In. Out._

_In. _

_Out. _

_In. _

_Out._

You squeeze your eyes even more tightly now, as you feel something akin to pain hit the very center of you. You feel as though a weight is starting to crush you, as if something – or someone – much heavier has settled right on top of you and is smothering you. You feel this mass moving rhythmically, and the pain you feel seems locked in step with the rhythm.

You open your eyes, and you see **his **face, a devilish rictus twisting what may have been a handsome visage into something much more frightening. His eyes are alight with lust, and you hear and feel his hot breath on your skin.

"No!" you scream, and then you feel nothing but the water pelting your naked skin again, and the frenzied beating of your heart. You find yourself panting, filled with terror and panic, and light-headed. Your knees buckle, and you almost fall, but you catch your balance in time and stay standing.

Fresh tears mix with the water from the shower, and you force yourself to purge the terror from your heart. It takes a good long while, but you finally manage to put yourself in a calm place.

You hear music through your sobs and the rush of water from the shower head. Music always soothed you, so you welcome it.

The song was a bit slow, very gentle, and it seemed familiar. You listen more closely to what the gravelly-voiced singer was singing:

_She's got a way of getting inside your soul,_

_she'd breach the walls of Jericho – make you fall like virgin snow._

_She's got a smile that makes you forget the things_

_you were only just thinking about – kinda turns me inside out._

_And if I try to conceal, she's got a way to reveal_

_I feel so naked, I feel so totally exposed._

_It's such a mystery how she seems to know every part of me._

_I feel so shaken – it's like everybody knows_

_Whenever she touches me, no one else can feel as much as me._

_She's got a way._

The song is sung in the voice of an ardent lover, but the words hit a little too close to home, their meaning corrupted and perverted by your recent experiences.

You can't stop yourself from crying.

"I can't do this," you tell yourself softly. 

"So you're just as lost and scared as the rest of us," said a familiar voice.

"More," you answer.

"These are the times that try men's souls."

"Oh, Ruby," you say. "I can't handle this. Don't look at me as if I know what to do."

"I'll tell you why we look up to you: Because you're a natural."

"Oh, I don't feel that."

"You don't have to," Ruby says kindly. "Just trust your instincts. Trust yourself as much as we trust you."

You think about what she has said, and you ask, "And if I can't?"

"Fake it. We won't know the difference."

And then, as you suddenly realize that this is a memory of a conversation from God knows how many months ago, you start to smile.

**VVVVV**

Julie sat on an elevated examination table, her shoulders slumped forward and her head bowed. She was now dressed in a black tank top, a tan shirt she kept unbuttoned, and gray sweatpants. Maggie sat next to her, stroking her head and back, trying to soothe and comfort her. They were talking in hushed voices, recounting Julie's time aboard the Mother Ship.

She didn't want to do it, but she knew that Maggie was right when she said it was often therapeutic to talk about bad events in one's life. Julie had learned as much from her basic psychology classes, classes she took during her bachelor's program. She summoned courage she didn't know existed from somewhere deep inside her and forced herself to look back at what had happened to her when she was Diana's prisoner.

Confessions were good for the soul, as the saying went.

"It's so strange to be wearing my own clothes again," Julie said. Maggie stayed quiet, letting Julie control the conversation and allowing her to go to topics she felt safe to discuss. "They made me strip when they took me up there, and they had me naked the whole time. The whole time. I don't know how long I was up there, but I never got used to not wearing anything at all the whole time."

Maggie swallowed, trying to hold back tears of sympathy. Maggie really didn't want to know the details of Julie's imprisonment aboard the Mother Ship; it was enough that she understood that the experience was a journey to hell as far as Julie was concerned. But a part of her also knew that Julie needed her right now, someone who would listen without passing judgment as she talked about her time on the Mother Ship.

Julie needed a friend, and Maggie accepted that responsibility.

Presently, Julie sobbed quietly, and Maggie drew her close and gave her a friendly hug. "How's your sandwich?" she asked.

Julie sniffed, then wiped a tear from her eye with her right hand. "Nutella's great. I miss chocolate." Maggie smiled, then Julie started to laugh gently, making Maggie laugh herself.

A few seconds later, though, Julie broke down and was in tears again. "Julie, honey, what's wrong?"

"Damn it," she said, banging her small fist into the examination table. Her left hand dropped the sandwich she had been eating.

"Julie? Julie, what's wrong?"

Julie wept bitterly into her hands. "How..." she started to say before her sobs choked the words and trapped her breath in her chest. "How am I supposed to trust myself, if she knows everything about me, and used it against me? I don't know which thoughts are mine, which feelings are mine-"

"Hey, hey, hey," Maggie said, tightening her embrace around Julie. "Shh... it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay."

"It's so hard," Julie complained bitterly.

"There's nothing simple about what they did to-"

"She... she raped me. Maybe not literally, though somehow she made me feel like I was getting raped, over and over again, I may as well have!" She wept uncontrollably now. "She fucked my mind, and now I don't know what's going on!"

Maggie just held Julie, never letting go until the younger woman had calmed down some. "Julie," Maggie began, "you went through hell up there, and I'll never know just how bad everything they did to you was. But you know what?" She waited until Julie looked up at her before continuing. "No matter what happened up there, we're all still here. Everyone in our group is here because we all believed in you when you started this so many months ago; we're all still here because we all wanted to get you back from up there.

"We're all still here because we still believe in you. No matter what, we'll be by your side.

"We'll help you beat this thing."

Julie gave her a small, hopeful smile, then reached out to hug Maggie.

"Thank you," she whispered.

**VVVVV**

Mike Donovan tossed and turned in his cot. As usual, sleep had been elusive, but once the adrenaline had worn off and exhaustion took over, he let himself go.

One worry had been purged from his mind, yet still many others remained. He was relieved that his plan to get Julie back from the Visitors worked, yet he couldn't forget nor ignore all of Tyler's near-constant warnings.

Nobody survives the conversion chamber. _I don't care about that._

They either own her, or her mind's been turned to Swiss cheese. _We'll help her through everything, one way or the other._

She's better off dead, and the rebels were better off without her. _We need her back; _I _need her back._

Thoughts like these whirled and spun and whispered and shouted their way into his unconscious, staining his thoughts even as he slept.

Even in his dreams the voices of doubt would not remain quiet. The same horrible dreams of the hope of rescuing his son Sean being dashed, the horror of watching _her_ dispatch him in cold blood, her accusations fueling his guilt over her own torments – a consequence of his decision to leave her behind to save the rest of his friends – filled his nights with raw terror.

And so it is again for Michael Donovan tonight.


	15. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

_Less than a drop of blood _

_remains in me that does not tremble;_

_I recognize the signals of the ancient flame_

Darkness.

Cold.

Heartbeat thundering and pounding.

The terrible weight crushing you, moving, undulating like a gigantic python on top of you.

Hands roaming all over your body.

Lips finding your face, your neck, other parts of you, against your will.

Pain.

Terror.

All this and more.

With a strangled gasp, Julie sat up on her cot. She was soaked in sweat despite the coldness of the air inside the makeshift infirmary. She clutched desperately at her covers and looked all around her, searching the shadows for a terror in the darkness that she sensed was there but couldn't see. Panic pulsed through her entire being, and she felt it with every frenzied beat of her heart.

As her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, she saw another cot a few feet away from hers, and the form of someone beneath the heavy covers. Her panic started to rise again, until she remembered what had happened just a few hours ago.

Wearing clothes – a red-orange uniform, a black cap, and black boots – for the first time in what felt like forever to her.

Leaving the Mother Ship.

The brief battle at the Visitor facility.

Her friends getting her back.

The terrifying escape.

Seeing her friends' faces.

Seeing _his _face.

The fear she felt, the almost overwhelming desire to just simply get away from _him_ when she saw him.

The feeling of her skin crawling every moment she felt _his _gaze fall on her.

Julie dug deep, summoning something buried inside her to push all those memories and feelings away. She willed her heart to slow, and she took deep, deliberate breaths.

As she did so, her eyes remained glued to the figure in the other cot, who, interestingly, still lay beneath the thick covers. "Whoever that is is a sound sleeper," she thought to herself. And then she remembered the quiet conversations from just a few hours ago. "Maggie," Julie said silently.

Eventually, the tide of panic subsided, and Julie swung her legs over the side of her cot. She shivered and gathered the quilt tightly around her body as she stood up. Her feet were encased in socks, but she welcomed the sensation of the planks creaking beneath her feet. It was so different to the smooth, cold metal floors up on the Mother Ship.

She wound the quilt tighter around herself, and she looked around, trying to orient herself to where she remembered the door to the outside of the barn was. "Think, Julie, think," she thought to herself, closing her eyes and trying to concentrate. Try as she did, though, she couldn't quite remember what direction to face to find her way to the door out.

Another wave of panic started to swell inside her, but Julie fought the feeling. She forced herself to breathe in through her nose and out her mouth, slowly, methodically. She pushed unpleasant, pain-filled memories of wandering in the dark from her mind with an effort that made her head spin, until she realized that she had held her breath. Again she made herself breathe slower, deeper.

A hot tear traced its way down Julie's cheek.

"What the hell's wrong with me?"

**VVVVV**

Ham Tyler looked down onto the floor of the makeshift infirmary. He had snuck in and climbed up into the loft, not long after Maggie had turned the lights out for the night. He had been very careful, moving quietly in the shadows to avoid detection.

He was used to operating in near-perfect silence, fading into the background and waiting with infinite patience for the perfect time to make his move. In his old life – prior to the Visitors' arrival, he was a CIA "mechanic," an operative authorized to perform assassinations – it was often a job requirement to do so.

It simply wouldn't do for your quarry to detect your presence.

And so he watched and waited up in the loft, his eyes fixed on Julie Parrish. Maggie Blodgett had fallen asleep rather easily, no doubt having exhausted the store of nervous energy amassed in the build-up to the raid on Visitor Security Headquarters. But the younger blonde, the one they rescued from the Visitors... she never got settled at all.

Not that Tyler was surprised about that.

_Being a POW would do that to you._

He had heard enough stories about agents and soldiers – including people he knew – getting captured by the enemy in his old life prior to the Visitors' arrival. Prisoners of war, whether direct participants such as soldiers or innocent civilians, were supposed to have been guaranteed humane treatment under the tenets of the Geneva Convention. But Tyler knew that all too often too many participants in war conveniently forgot about these rules when doing so suited their purposes.

He knew all too well, in fact, since he himself had been a participant in more than a few instances when the Agency conveniently forgot those rules.

If governments of the world saw fit to ignore the Geneva Convention, treaties that they had pledged to uphold, when its tenets conflicted with their interests, how could you expect the alien Visitors to treat its human prisoners?

Tyler was nothing if not a pragmatist.

He knew about the conversion process. He had been briefed extensively about it, and his security clearance was more than high enough for him to be aware of the Agency's own similar programs. He knew about how it was supposed to work, how it was done, how effective it was. The Visitors' conversion process was far more effective than MKULTRA or anything else the Agency ever did in this field. It was better than any mind control program the Soviets and its allies ever came up with, better than anything Red China did.

Tyler knew that the Visitors either converted you or broke your brain. Or killed you. At any rate, if the Visitors ran you through the conversion process, you were fucked.

His contacts in the clandestine worldwide organization had informed him about how this Juliet Parrish was, in fact, subjected to the Visitors' conversion process during her time in captivity; it was now his task to watch her closely.

To determine whether or not she had been converted.

_How can she _**not **_have been? She was up on that ship for almost a month. That's more than enough time for anyone to break, I'd guess, using their methods._

To find out whether or not she could be trusted.

_I can't trust Gooder for this. I have to see, with my own eyes, what this girl's apt to do._

To know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, whether or not Julie Parrish should be eliminated as a danger not just to the local Los Angeles resistance group, but to the global network as well.

_You can't be betrayed if you take the traitor out first._

Ham Tyler had his orders, and duty and his ruthless pragmatism were to decide what he ought to do.

**VVVVV**

Mike Donovan yawned as he walked into the mess hall. It was one of the few fully-functional buildings on the movie ranch, used for the same purpose by the film companies that rented the property for shoots.

It was still dark, a quarter of an hour before sunrise, but someone had already got the coffee started, so he grabbed a cup and poured himself some. He breathed in the strong aroma of the coffee – "It's not Starbucks, but it's better than nothing," he thought – and took a careful sip.

He turned around and noticed Ham Tyler sitting by his lonesome at a table. Mike walked over and took a chair opposite Tyler's. "You're up early," Mike said.

"Always," replied Tyler, who then took a sip from his own cup. "Somebody has to make the first pot of coffee."

"You look like you haven't slept a wink."

Tyler gave Donovan a quick glance. "And you look like you've been having nasty nightmares."

Donovan thought about countering Tyler, but stayed silent. Ham's comment was too close to the truth. He decided to shift the conversation to a new topic instead. "You waiting for someone?"

"Chris."

Donovan looked at Tyler. The ex-CIA man didn't meet his gaze. Instead, he looked as if he was distracted, deep in thought about something else entirely. "You guys heading off somewhere this morning?" Mike was curious.

"Supply run. Gotta top up on munitions."

Mike raised an eyebrow, then took a sip from his cup. He looked at Tyler again. "I forgot to thank you."

"What for?"

"You helped us get Julie back."

"Oh. That," Tyler said blankly. "I did tell you that we were going to do that, didn't I?"

"Yeah." Donovan put his cup of coffee on the table and stared at the back of his hands. "But you've also kept telling me to forget about it, forget about her," he said finally.

Mike looked at Tyler, expecting some kind of response. Instead, Tyler just kept staring into space.

"Why did you keep telling me that?"

"No point in telling you now, is there, Gooder? We got her back, just like you wanted." For the first time Tyler looked at him directly. "You having second thoughts about all this?"

"It's not that," Donovan stammered. His mind drifted back to last night. He winced at the memory of Julie's reaction to seeing him, recognizing him. "Don't worry about it," he said.

Tyler raised both eyebrows, then took his coffee mug. "I told you last night," he said as he stood up. Donovan looked up at the door and saw Chris Farber walking toward them. "Watch her close, and don't make the mistake of trusting her," he said as he stood. "You ready?" he asked Chris.

"Gimme a couple of minutes. A man needs his coffee," Farber bellowed.

"Wait," Donovan said to Tyler. "What exactly am I supposed to see? What am I looking for?"

"Other than her using the wrong hand compared to how she was before? I can't answer that. You know her; I don't. I haven't even met her."

Chris Farber approached them, having filled his insulated cup to the brim. "I'm good to go, brother."

Tyler looked down at Donovan, who was still seated. He looked the ex-cameraman in the eye. "I know one thing, though: I wouldn't trust her."

**VVVVV**

Julie opened her eyes. For a moment she was unsure of where she was. Then she became aware of the weight and feel of fabric covering her, and the pleasant warmth this endowed. She yawned, then sat up, wrapping the quilt around herself to savor the feeling of warmth for a little while longer.

She looked around, slowly recognizing where she was. "There's the examination table... and there's the shower," she thought to herself. Her eyes found the second cot – pillows and blanket and covers all done neatly on top – not far from the one she had slept in, sparking a memory in her mind. She saw the image of someone in the cot, under a bundle of fabric not dissimilar to the one she had wrapped herself in. "Maggie," Julie said softly.

She decided to make her own bed. She unwrapped the quilt from around her body and set it down by the foot of her own cot. She smoothed the covers and fluffed the pillows, then carefully and neatly set the blanket and quilt on top.

She had just about finished when she heard the door into the barn creak. She spun her head around and saw Maggie peek in before walking into the barn.

"Hey, Julie, I didn't know you were up!"

Julie heard and felt the compassion in Maggie's voice. She thought about it, then felt brave enough to give Maggie a small smile. "Yeah."

"You feeling okay?"

Julie nodded. "Yeah. I'm alright."

"How'd you sleep?"

Julie thought about the question for a moment. She remembered waking up in the darkness, the nightmare that woke her then, the all-too-real feelings and sensations that came with the dream. Then she looked at Maggie's gentle, friendly smile.

"Okay," Julie said, deciding to fudge the truth somewhat. She thought that being absolutely honest right now would only force her to revisit her nightmares, something she really didn't want to do. At least, not at the present time. "I slept okay."

"You want me to get you some breakfast? Caleb makes a pretty mean omelette; I can ask him to make you one."

Julie considered the question. She was feeling a bit hungry, yes; on the other hand, she felt like it would have been an imposition on Maggie if she did say yes. She tried to think about Maggie's question some more, but found nothing but a random jumble of thoughts in her mind.

Frustrated, she sat on her cot and held her head in her arms, crying. Maggie ran to her and crouched by her side, rubbing her back and shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. 

"Julie, honey, what's the matter?"

Julie sighed. She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at Maggie. "I'm just... I can't concentrate. I can't think straight anymore."

"Hey," Maggie said. "Hey. It's okay. You'll be alright. It'll just take a little bit of time."

"It was just a simple question," Julie sniffed. "I can't even handle such a simple question."

"Come on," Maggie said, gently pulling on Julie's wrist as she stood up. "Let's go for a walk out in the sun. It'll do you great."

Julie sniffed again, then nodded. Maggie gave her a reassuring embrace and led her out of the barn. "What time is it anyway?"

"A bit past nine," Maggie answered. She opened the door. "Sun's bright, isn't it?"

Julie squinted as she stepped out of the barn. Her eyes hurt a little as they adjusted to the brightness, but she enjoyed the wonderful warmth on her skin. "Maggie?"

"Hmm?"

"How long was I up there again?"

"Wow," Maggie said, thinking. "Almost a month. It's been twenty six days since the raid on the Medical Center." She looked at the smaller woman. "Why?"

"It's been that long since I last saw the sun," Julie said flatly. "I haven't realized just how much I've missed it, how many things I've taken for granted."

Maggie looked at Julie again. She saw a haunted look in the younger woman's eyes. "Hey," she said. "Don't beat yourself up like that. You never took anything for granted."

Julie looked at her, her eyes shining with tears just on the verge of falling. "What happened to you wasn't normal; it wasn't how we planned it," Maggie said, her voice filled with urgent compassion. "Too many things in life – all our lives now, not just yours – aren't exactly normal now. But you know what? Some things still are. Like the sun in the sky, you know?"

Maggie smiled at Julie, and the younger woman smiled back, even as the tears fell. Maggie gave her a comforting hug. "Now, how about some breakfast? I figure some of the others are probably still there. They'd be thrilled to see you, I bet."

Julie nodded, still smiling, as she wiped yet more tears from her face. They began the trek towards the mess hall, when Mark McIntyre and Sancho Gomez saw them and ran over to meet them.

"Julie!" Sancho said, giving her a hug. "You feeling okay?"

Julie smiled at him. "Yeah, I'm alright."

"Hey, Julie," Mark said, just finishing his hug with Maggie to give Julie one. "Maggie's taking good care of you, I bet, huh?"

"She is," Julie answered, smiling. "I'm so glad to be back with friends."

"You boys joining us for breakfast?" asked Maggie.

"Already had some," Mark replied. "We're on day shift guard duty."

"Yeah," Sancho said with a beaming smile. "We tough guys always get the toughest jobs."

Maggie, Julie and Mark laughed. Just then a Chevy pick-up with two men in the cab drove past them, kicking up dust into the air. Julie noticed that the man in the passenger seat, a man with thinning dark hair and what looked like scars on his otherwise unremarkable face, was staring at her as the vehicle went past.

"There goes 'Mr. Friendly' and his big buddy, the teddy bear," Mark spat.

Julie looked puzzled. "'Mr. Friendly'?"

"I'll let Mags explain," Mark grumbled.

"That's probably better," Maggie said, laughing. "The driver – the big guy with the beard – is Chris Farber; 'Mr. Friendly' is Ham Tyler."

"New recruits?" Julie asked.

"Not exactly," Maggie answered. "They found us, actually, the very next day after the hospital raid. Tyler said he and Chris are part of a worldwide movement dedicated to fighting the Visitors. They've provided us with ammunition, some intelligence -"

"And a lot of bullshit too," Mark interrupted.

"Mark and Tyler don't see eye-to-eye," Sancho explained. "He did help get you back, though," he continued, looking at Julie.

Julie looked at Maggie. "Tyler and Mike planned the whole op," Maggie explained.

"Mike?" Julie asked, swallowing down a sudden onset of discomfort that radiated from her core at the mention of Mike Donovan's name. She hoped nobody noticed.

"I guess that's true. Gotta give him some points for that," said Mark. He opened his arms and offered Julie another hug. "Well, Julie, it's so great to have you back."

"Yeah, we better get back to work, eh?" Sancho said. "Great to see you, Julie."

Julie smiled and embraced Mark and Sancho. "Thanks, guys. I'll see you later."

The two women continued their walk to the mess hall.

"Maggie?"

"Yeah?"

"Why was he looking at me like that?"

"What? Who?"

"The guy in the passenger seat. Tyler."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. He was just staring at me when they drove past, like... like, I don't know, like I did something wrong."

"Don't pay any attention to him. That's how he is with mostly everybody."

Julie couldn't put the look on Tyler's face out of her mind as they continued their walk.

They arrived at the mess hall. Since it was now mid-morning, it was mostly deserted. Fortunately, Caleb was still there. Harmony was, as well; in fact, she had taken on the duty of being in charge of the mess hall, given the fact that she ran her own catering truck business. Her "roach coach" specials – allied with her naturally friendly disposition – ensured that she quickly became one of the group's most popular people.

"Julie!" Caleb greeted as soon as they walked in. "Harmony, Julie's here!"

"Hey, Caleb," Julie answered with a smile.

"You doing okay?" he said as he gave her a hug.

Julie smiled again, nodding. "Yeah."

"Caleb, I told her you make a pretty mean omelette," Maggie said.

"And indeed I do!" Caleb replied proudly. "Lemme fix one up for you while Harmony's here to chat."

"Julie!" Harmony said as she ran out of the kitchen. "I'm so glad to see you up on your feet! How do you feel?"

Julie hugged Harmony. As she did, it occurred to her just how much she had missed such intimate contact. Because she was shy and introverted by nature, gestures like a simple friendly embrace did not come naturally or easily to Julie; she preferred to keep most people at an arm's length, at least until there came a point in time when she felt absolutely willing to trust them. Her past boyfriends – not that she had had too many – learned this about her, and the ones who stayed with her long enough understood and accepted this about her. But once she felt safe with people, it was as if she became a different person, more open and willing to share more of herself.

Now, as she felt Harmony's friendly squeeze, she thought about just how amazing it was that she allowed herself to come out of her natural shell just a few months ago. "This feels right," she thought to herself, thinking the thought that subconsciously came to her each time she let someone, anyone, past the emotional gates guarding her introverted self.

"I'm good," she finally answered Harmony. "I'm with friends."

**VVVVV**

Chris Farber brought the Chevy Colorado to a skidding halt, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Who's that with Gooder?" he asked Ham Tyler, pointing to a balding man who appeared to be in his mid-50s, a tired slouch in his shoulders, and a melancholy look to his eyes. His right arm was wrapped in a heavy bandage as well. The man was walking towards a Lincoln Continental, waving good-bye to Donovan.

"Dunno," Tyler answered as he opened the passenger door. He watched the Lincoln leave in a cloud of dust. "I gotta talk to Gooder about not telling people about where our HQ is."

"He's really kinda clueless, isn't he?"

Tyler paused, halfway out of the truck cabin. "I wouldn't go that far. I guess he can't help himself. He's just an amateur." He sighed. "All these people are. They're too trusting for their own good. They don't know what fighting a war's really like."

"Gonna set him straight?"

"I've been trying," Tyler said as he got out of the pick-up. He waited until Chris got out of the vehicle, then they walked towards Donovan and the stranger. "I've been trying."

"Tyler!" Donovan called out. Ham and Chris quickly closed the distance. "Ruby's dead," he said quietly as soon as Ham and Chris were close enough to hear.

"What?" Chris exclaimed. Tyler betrayed no reaction.

"That was Stanley Bernstein. He has a safehouse that we can come to in the Pacific Palisades. He came to tell us his son killed Ruby."

"His son?" Tyler asked.

"Yeah. His kid Daniel. He's with the Friends of the Visitors. An officer, actually." Donovan wiped his mouth. "Poor guy, Stanley. I can't imagine my kid being rotten like that."

"How'd it happen?" Chris asked.

"Stanley said Daniel bragged about killing Ruby to him and his wife. He said Daniel found her in the basement of Security Headquarters shortly after the bomb went off. He shot her after she begged him to let her go." Donovan looked anguished as he told the story. "The bastard."

"I want a piece of his ass," Chris said angrily.

"You can have my leftovers," Tyler growled.

Ham seldom betrayed any emotion over anything, so Donovan was somewhat shocked; he had never seen Tyler this way before. He tried to change the subject. "How are we gonna tell the others?"

"You'll have to do it," Tyler answered.

"Why me?"

"Because you got the news firsthand from Bernstein. Because you're a newsman. And because you're the leader of this outfit."

"I'm not the leader; Julie is."

"Doesn't matter. Consider her on sick leave. You're it."

"I could ask Maggie or Elias or -"

Tyler grabbed Donovan's arm. "Look, Gooder, you've never been an idiot. A bit naive, maybe. But never an idiot." Donovan shook his arm loose from Tyler's grip. Ham continued. "There's nobody else. This is your ball, your carry."

Donovan looked at his shoes, then nodded. "You're right."

"Good." Tyler laid a hand on Donovan's shoulder and gave it a shake. "One question."

"What's that?"

"Your little lady friend, is she a righty or a lefty?"

**VVVVV**

Julie smiled as she chewed on the Denver omelette Caleb Taylor had made for her. "They weren't kidding, Caleb," she said, covering her mouth with her right hand. "This is seriously good!"

"Told you!" Maggie said, laughing.

Caleb, Harmony, Maggie, and Julie were seated together. They all looked towards the door into the mess hall when Mike Donovan and Ham Tyler walked in. Julie's smile disappeared, her eyes darting all over the room. Maggie saw Julie's reaction, then grabbed her friend's right hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Donovan's face was unspeakably sad as he spoke. "Guys," he said. "Ruby's dead. I just got the news from Stanley Bernstein."

Everyone gasped at the revelation.

Julie dropped the fork in her left hand onto the floor.


	16. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

_There is no greater sorrow_

_Than to be mindful of the happy time_

_In misery._

"You can do it," Julie thought to herself. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror, noting the dark spots beneath her eyes and the general pallor of her skin. "You can do it."

She turned around when she heard the soft knock on the door into the infirmary. Maggie Blodgett opened the door slowly and let herself in. "Hey," said the older woman.

"Hey."

"How are you doing?"

"Fine, I guess."

"Ready to move on from here to your own room? Well," Maggie hesitated, "you'll be sharing it with a couple of other people, too, but –"

Julie smiled. "I feel a bit like it's graduation day."

"Yeah, I can see how!" Maggie laughed. "On to bigger and better things!"

She walked towards Julie. "Just leave all the bedding here. Harmony and I will take care of it. You've got a fresh set of everything waiting for you."

Julie looked down on her feet, then nodded. Maggie touched her shoulder. "Hey. You sure you don't want a bunk in one of the all-ladies cars?"

After a second's worth of thought, Julie said, "Yeah, I'm sure." She gave Maggie a small smile. "Besides, Mark and Elias have already moved my stuff. I don't want to be a bigger inconvenience to everyone."

"Oh, don't even think like that! You're NOT an inconvenience," Maggie said with a look of mock disgust. "I'm sure they'd do it for you, if you wanted it."

Julie thought for a moment, then said, "No. I think this is the right thing. Sooner or later, I'd have to deal with things, you know? I mean, Donovan and I would have to talk, you know, about all the things the group has to do..." She sighed, fighting the tension and apprehension squeezing her at the moment.

"I can't keep on running away and avoiding things," Julie shut her eyes and sighed. She decided to change the subject. "Hey," she said as she turned to face her friend. "What time is Ruby's memorial service?"

"10:00AM, about an hour from now."

Three days had passed since Donovan told the group about her death.

Three long, difficult days.

Everybody in the group, no matter what role they played within it, no matter how old they were, no matter how deep their commitment to the cause and to every other member of the group, felt the pain of the loss. The group had lost people before, but Ruby's murder by Daniel Bernstein's hand stabbed at its collective heart. It was a wound that hurt far worse than anything they had shared together in the months that they had been together.

And ever since she'd been told, very gently and without a hint of accusation, that Ruby had died during the operation to rescue her, the pain – the guilt – that Julie felt was worse than what most of the others felt.

"You okay?" Maggie asked as she looked at her friend.

Julie wiped the tears from her cheeks and nodded. "Yeah," she said, clearing her throat. "I'll be alright. Just thinking about Ruby." She changed the subject again. "Want to show me to my new place?"

Maggie smiled sympathetically. "Sure," she said as she rubbed Julie's shoulder in a friendly, comforting gesture.

They left the barn, then walked towards the cluster of railroad cars that served as the group's dormitories. Maggie led Julie to one in particular, set aside from the rest. This car was where Donovan, Father Andrew, Caleb, Harmony, and Elias all slept. She motioned for Julie to climb the two-step wooden box stair steps that bridged the gap between the gravel on the ground and the bottom rung of the metal stairs up into the train car. "Careful," Maggie said as she held Julie's arm. "It's a high step."

"Being short doesn't help, does it?"

Maggie laughed at Julie's small joke. "At least she's getting better, well enough to tell jokes," she thought to herself.

"It's almost unfair. This thing was built for tall people," Julie said as she pulled herself up into the train car. "Like Donovan."

Maggie laughed again, then hoisted herself aboard the railroad car. She led Julie inside. The corridor was short and narrow, closets and storage compartments taking up the majority of the interior space. A passageway led to a door into the car's lone passenger compartment, an open space in the middle of the car just big enough to house a small desk set off to one side, and six narrow beds. Two of the beds were double-decker bunk beds. Maggie pointed out the shower and restroom, accessible by another narrow corridor on the right at the other end of the train car .

Maggie pointed to the bottom portion of a bunk bed on the left side of the train car. "This one's Mike's. From the looks of things he didn't spend any time in it the previous night." She noticed Julie looking up at the top bunk. "He's keeping the top bunk free, for Sean. You know, for whenever he gets him back."

Julie nodded blankly, then sighed as she sat on the bed opposite Donovan's on the right. At the foot of the bed was a large open cardboard box filled with Julie's clothes and other belongings. "I guess this bed's mine."

Maggie smiled. "It's been waiting for you for weeks now."

Julie pulled her sneakers off, then lay down on the sheets, savoring the coolness that only fresh bedding had. She closed her eyes. "Maggie, is it okay if I spent a little time by myself?"

"Of course it is," Maggie said.

"I'll see you at the memorial service, okay?"

"Sure." Maggie smiled at her friend, patting her gently on the thigh, then left Julie on her own.

Julie spent the next few minutes on her new bed, just looking around, trying to familiarize herself with her new surroundings. "Another new room," she thought to herself. To her horror, she couldn't remember how any of her previous rooms from before her time as Diana's prisoner looked. Instead, her mind gravitated towards two rooms up on the Mother Ship: Her holding cell – it seemed just as small and claustrophobic as this train cabin – and the conversion chamber itself.

She gritted her teeth, pushing those thoughts away.

She looked around the cabin again. The smaller space endowed it with a lot more intimacy than the infirmary ever did, but the idea of sharing it with Donovan filled her with a very real dread.

"No!" she thought to herself fiercely. "There's no reason to think that way."

Yet a small part of her kept on feeding her constant whispers of doubt, the kind of doubt that spiraled out of control into a chaotic, mindless terror.

With a huge effort, she sat up on the bed. She looked at the box that shared the bed with her. "Might as well organize my stuff while I'm here. It'll keep my mind off things."

Julie pulled out a bunch of shirts, then started re-folding them the way she preferred. "I hope Maggie isn't offended that I'm redoing the work she did with my stuff," she thought. "I guess I just want to do these the way **I** do it."

She worked automatically, just letting her hands move the most naturally for her. She was just about to start with some jeans and sweatpants when she heard someone clambering up the metal staircase into the railway car. She froze when she heard the door into the car open, then footsteps advance towards her.

Her heart was pumping really hard and fast by the time Mike Donovan walked into the cabin. It was all she could do to resist the urge to yell for help.

He looked surprised at first when he saw her, then his heart sank when he saw her reaction to him. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, after a moment's silence. "I just wanted to wash my face, change shirts, freshen up for Ruby's memorial service."

Julie's heart felt like it would burst out of her chest, but the way Mike spoke softened the desperate clench that terror held on her. She forced herself to breathe deeply – in through the nose and out through the mouth – then stood up from her bed. "Donovan, wait," she said, calling out to him as he spun around to leave the cabin.

She forced herself to take a few steps towards him. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said gently. "I – I should have knocked or something. I didn't know you were in here."

"Don't be silly," she said after a moment. She looked at him, forcing herself to keep eye contact with him, but found it too difficult. She spun around so he wouldn't see her tears. "You haven't done anything wrong."

Donovan bit his lip. He wanted so much to close the distance between himself and Julie, to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, no matter what had happened the last few weeks, or even the last few months.

He could sense the pain and turmoil that Julie was feeling from where he stood.

And it frustrated him that he didn't know what to say or do at that moment.

"It's not your fault," Julie said. She turned around slowly, bravely facing him, choosing to let him see her at her most vulnerable. "I'm sorry."

Donovan took a couple of steps forward, closing the space between them. He pulled her towards him and embraced her.

She flinched the moment his hand touched her skin – if he noticed, he didn't show it – then returned the embrace after just a moment's hesitation. She felt the fear swell inside her as she sensed just how much stronger than her he was, but she swallowed hard, fighting the fear, not wanting to give in to the feeling.

"I don't want to feel so frightened when I'm with you," she said. "I'm sorry. I can't help it."

Julie was really crying now as she looked up at Donovan. He held her head gently, then carefully wiped the tears off her rosy cheeks with a gloved hand. "It's not your fault. It's gonna be okay."

She blinked as she looked up at him, the words hitting too close to home. She pushed away from Mike.

Julie had heard him say those words to her before.

And she remembered what happened that time.

"Julie," he started to say.

"Don't!"

She looked at him, confusion plain on his face as he stared back. Confusion gave way to a certain sadness, which softened his features even more.

The ache in Julie's throat and in her chest was excruciating as she wept freely before Donovan. He pulled her towards himself again, holding her in an ardent embrace, more tightly than before. She pushed against him, but he only held her tighter. "Shh," he whispered as he gently stroked her head. "It's okay. It's okay."

His strength terrified her; her heart, beating as hard and as fast as she could ever remember, felt like it was ready to explode. She tried to fight against him, but although he didn't release his hold on her, his embrace never morphed into an attempt to pin her to the wall or slam her onto the floor of the railway car. She felt lightheaded, on the verge of fainting, but she fought the feeling, fearing that she would be utterly defenseless if she did. That's how it always was, the way she remembered things happened whenever she was in his arms.

Except, of course, that **wasn't** how things always went.

Threads of a memory, all too detailed and real, crept into the forefront of her consciousness. She felt the bite of the cold nighttime air, and she could smell the fetid stench that hung around the environs of the abandoned sewer plant. She heard the pounding of running footsteps, then saw him running breathlessly from out of the mouth of the tunnel.

And she remembered how she ran towards him, effectively tackling him with a near-desperate embrace filled with relief.

"Leave a couple ribs intact," he joked then as he returned the embrace.

"I was so worried about you," she said in reply. And it was the naked truth.

She _was_ worried about him at that moment. And now, at this moment, as he held her firmly but with a surprising gentleness, she could somehow feel that _he _was worried about _her_.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he whispered. This time, she stopped pushing him away. She looked up at him, not caring about how vulnerable she felt. "I would never hurt you."

"Damn it," she said softly, tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Mike –"

"I'm the one who needs to apologize." Mike looked into her eyes, then wiped away her tears. "I'm so sorry it took us forever to break you out. I'm sorry I didn't come back for you, back at the hospital..."

This time Julie pulled him tight against herself. He just relaxed, returning her embrace.

"Hey," he said after a minute. "You want to walk with me to Ruby's memorial service. It's almost time."

She smiled shyly at him. "You need to change?"

Mike looked at his watch, then smiled at her. "Nah."

**VVVVV**

Ham Tyler scratched his temple, then took the headphones off.

"Damn it, Gooder," he thought. He had bugged the train car Parrish had been assigned to and had listened in on her interaction with Donovan.

"You'll be the death of us all."


	17. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

_The greatest gift in his largess God_

_Creating made, and unto his own goodness_

_Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize_

_Most highly, is the freedom of the will,_

_Wherewith the creatures of intelligence_

_Both all and only were and are endowed._

"We going to the old lady's memorial service?"

Ham looked back at Chris. He furrowed his brown, then nodded.

"We gotta get a move on, then," Chris said, pointing at the rapidly assembling throng of resistance fighters gathering around a modest cross and flowers erected in Ruby's memory. "It's almost time."

The two trudged towards the gathering. Farber then nudged Tyler, pointing with a gaze towards a man and a woman walking together headed the same way they were. "Hey, brother, what's he doing with her?"

Tyler didn't look to where his friend had indicated, but knew exactly who Chris was referring to. "Obviously not listening to what I told him."

"Oh," Chris said, "I see." They continued walking, when Chris continued, "So what are we gonna do about it?"

"Just keep our heads on a swivel and our eyes and ears open," Tyler answered. "Make sure you watch her real close."

"No problem."

Father Andrew presided over the memorial service for Ruby. The rebels, of course, never recovered her body, but that didn't stop them from mourning her loss.

Most of the rebels attended the service. The only exceptions, of course, were the few who were assigned to perimeter defense duties. But those who had been with the group since its inception were in attendance.

Some were in tears as Father Andrew spoke again. "Our life in this world is short, and often painful; its full meaning is rarely made clear to us. I'd dare say that none of us here will live as fully – or die as heroically – as Ruby did."

Julie felt the now-familiar cold hand of guilt clench her heart tightly. Her conscious mind tried to tell her that Father Andrew's words were _not_ an accusation directed at her, but she never could silence that part of her mind that constantly whispered that it was her fault that Ruby died. She stifled a sob as new tears fell down her cheeks.

Father Andrew continued, "Her loss is a grievous one that wounds us all to the heart. We must find the strength to go on, the strength to prevail over this cruel and murderous foe. Let's rededicate ourselves to that task in Ruby's memory."

The priest paused, reaching out to his sides. "Now, please, join me," offering his hands as an example to his comrades, "let's share a moment of silence to pay our last respects to our fallen comrade."

Most of the gathered rebels clasped hands with whomever was next to them. The only exceptions were Farber, who glared menacingly at Elias Taylor who reached out to him, and Tyler.

He was too busy watching Donovan reach out for Parrish's hand.

The rebels dispersed after the service, going in groups towards where their duties dictated they should go. Donovan and Julie were walking towards the saloon, when Tyler caught up with them.

Julie looked at Tyler uncertainly, then offered her hand. "I don't believe we've met, Mr. Tyler –"

"I gotta talk to you, in private," Ham said to Mike, completely ignoring Julie.

Donovan looked at him, then at Julie. "You can say whatever you need to right now."

"Mike," Julie said, looking at both men in turn, "it's okay. I'll see you at the meeting?"

Donovan looked at her. "You sure?"

She nodded. "Yeah." She pointed towards the saloon. "It's over there, right?"

"Yeah."

"Alright."

As Julie walked off towards the saloon, Donovan turned to Tyler, somewhat annoyed. "Well?"

"Are you serious, Gooder?"

"What?"

"You're taking her to the strategy meeting?"

"Why not? She's the leader of this outfit."

"I can't believe how stupid you've become."

Donovan put his hands in his jacket's front pockets. "Whatever."

"You _know_ what those snakes did to her. She was up there almost a month. That's an awful long time, more than enough for most people."

"Martin said he had a man on the inside; he said she wasn't –"

"That's another thing. I think you're trusting all the wrong people."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I don't trust _you_."

Tyler laughed, amused. "That's good, Gooder." He looked at his watch. "Look, I've got an appointment to keep. Chris and I won't be attending the meeting."

Donovan was caught off-guard. "You feel that strongly about Julie? You're skipping out because she's going to be there?"

"I absolutely don't trust her," he said, "but my appointment isn't about her at all. You brief your need-to-knows about the next op; I already know what the next target is, so I don't really need to be there for this meeting."

"Fine." Donovan rubbed his forehead. "I guess we'll see you guys when you get back."

Tyler nodded. "I guarantee it."

Julie sat at a small round table in the middle of the gathering of resistance fighters in the saloon. An hour ago she was in the same room, sitting in on a strategy meeting with Donovan, Father Andrew, Mark McIntyre, Robert Maxwell, Maggie Blodgett, and Caleb Taylor. At the end of that meeting she asked them if she could be the one to brief the rest of their group about its next operation. Donovan was reluctant, very conscious of Julie's previous complaints to him regarding the burdens of leadership. Truth be told, Tyler's constant admonitions also nagged at him. Julie reasoned that her recovery from her time in captivity might be helped by resuming her old routines; reconnecting with what she used to do before her capture could only help her move on from the traumas she experienced as Diana's prisoner, she argued. The others agreed, so Donovan conceded.

He stood behind the saloon counter, while Julie was at the table along with Maggie, Father Andrew, and Robert. On the table was a map of the northern region of Los Angeles County. She marked Lake Castaic, which was actually less than fifteen miles away from their current location, on the map with a bright red pushpin.

"That new Mother Ship, which arrived eleven days ago, moved from downtown to over Castaic are last week. The Visitors had been secretly retooling the facilities there for the last couple of months, installing newer, much more powerful pumps, as well as new pipes and other infrastructure. We had no idea they were doing this, until the Fifth Column gave Donovan the intel yesterday. It was such a big secret that not even Martin knew about it." Julie withdrew a blow-up of a photograph from underneath the map. "This is what they're up to."

She showed the photo to the group, eliciting gasps of disbelief. It showed three gigantic pipes running up from the Castaic pumping station directly into the gargantuan Mother Ship, which hovered above a nearby ridge at an altitude no greater than 1500 feet.

"According to the intel Donovan got from the Fifth Column, those pipes are a direct connection between that Mother Ship, which is mostly filled with storage tanks, and the new pumps the Visitors installed. Those pumps bypass the preexisting ones at the station, siphoning the water up to that Mother Ship. They can completely drain Lake Castaic in a matter of a couple of weeks."

She pointed to the pushpin on the map again. "So unless we blow up those bypassing pumps at the Castaic pumping station, Southern California's going to be one big desert."

Tense murmurs broke out amongst the assembled rebels. Elias Taylor then said, loudly enough for all to hear, "I don't think I'm ready to trade my ride in for a camel." The group laughed at the joke.

"But before we can move on this, though," Julie said, "we need to do some serious recon work first. The intel we have isn't rich in detail –"

"EVERYBODY FREEZE," said a loud, reverberating voice from outside. "MAKE THE SLIGHTEST MOVEMENT, AND YOU'LL BE SHOT!"

The rebels in the saloon reacted, drawing their weapons and getting behind cover as quickly as they could. Everyone thought the same thing.

_The Visitors! They've found us!_

They kept their weapons trained at the door into the saloon, waiting for the rush of Shock Troopers. They heard boots climb the wooden stairs and the creak of the floorboards, but were confused because it didn't sound like there were a lot of them out there.

The doors into the saloon swung inwards, and Ham and Chris walked in, big smiles on their faces.

The rebels, disgusted at being had, groaned collectively and started to put their weapons away. Tyler walked over to the small round table in the middle of the room and reached for his neck. He removed a black device which had been stuck on the front of his neck, just above his chest, secured by an elastic band, and threw it onto the table. "This little gizmo makes your larynx reverberate; it mimics that sound they make."

Chris threw a bunch of the devices onto the table. "We've only got a few of them right now, so use them sparingly," Tyler said.

"Are you always this dramatic, Mr. Tyler?" Julie asked as she holstered her pistol.

"I like to get people's attention," he answered. "That way I don't have to repeat myself."

For the first time since the group meeting began, Donovan spoke. "Julie and I will test them at the pumping station. That way we'll know if they fool the Visitors as easily as they fool us."

"You and her?" Tyler asked. "This is a reconnaissance mission, not a picnic in the park."

Donovan was fed up. "You're out of line."

"This girl cannot be trusted. She thinks like a lizard now."

Donovan leaped over the counter and lunged towards Tyler, but Julie, Robert and Caleb held him back. Chris, meanwhile, slipped his bulk in between Tyler and the others. The rest of the group got on its feet, ready for anything.

It took a few seconds, but everyone eventually cooled off and relaxed.

Then Caleb gave voice to a previously unspoken concern he and some of the rebels had.

"I'm sorry, Julie," he said, looking at her with sadness, "as much as we might all hate to admit it, the man could have a point."

Julie looked at him, then at everyone else. "I led this unit for a long time before Mr. Tyler showed up," she said, her voice quiet but strong. She took a deep breath, then continued, "I refuse to step down because he's paranoid.

"I'm okay."

"Tell us about the conversion chamber," Tyler said, "tell us about what you went through. Tell us about the secrets you told them."

"I told them nothing."

"We already lost Ruby getting her back," Tyler said, in a tone that revealed everything. "How high does the body count have to get before you all find out who this girl really is?"

"Ruby gave her life to rescue me, and there's nothing I can do to repay that!" Julie said, tears falling. "But if I walk away now, she died in vain; I have no intention of ever doing that."

The rebels started talking amongst themselves again, debating the opposing points of view. Mark spoke up after a few minutes.

"I say we stick with Julie. I know I trust her more than I trust him," referring to Tyler.

"Yeah, he's right," answered Sancho Gomez.

"We've gotten this far with her," said Elias. "We ought to go all the way."

The rebels all nodded their assent.

"Alright, that goes for all of us," Robert said to Tyler and Farber.

Tyler furrowed his brow and shrugged. He was surprised when Julie spoke to him.

"Tyler," she said, "we need you. We need your expertise.

"So are you in, or are you out?"

Ham looked at Chris, who said nothing. It was Ham's call.

"We're in," he said. "For now."

**VVVVV**

Mike Donovan drove the white Ford Focus sedan through the gates into the Lake Castaic pumping station. The car was adorned with Visitor insignias on its front doors. Juliet Parrish was seated next to him. Both of them wore Visitor uniforms, complete with black caps and their distinctively-styled sunglasses. Hidden beneath the neck clasps of their uniforms were the devices that generated the vibrato effect that the Visitors' vocal chords made naturally.

The Fifth Column provided the vehicle they were in, as well as a couple of passes that gave them almost unlimited access into and throughout the Castaic facility. The uniforms, though, had previously been in the resistance's inventory. Mike got his in the very early days of the invasion, given to him by Barbara when the Fifth Column broke him out from captivity. Julie, of course, wore the same uniform she was dressed in the night she was brought down from Diana's Mother Ship. The Fifth Column supplied her with a pair of the sunglasses, though, to complete the look.

All through their trip from headquarters to Castaic, Mike had tried to initiate conversation with Julie. She didn't feel like talking much, although she did admit that she felt a little "strange" wearing the red uniform.

_That makes me feel a bit better_, Mike thought sarcastically.

She did mention one small thing when they were about two miles from the Castaic facility.

"I think we've got a problem," she said.

"What's the matter?"

She held up the back of her right hand, showing the wounds from the bites she gave herself when she was still Diana's prisoner. The wounds were still healing over. "I'm not sure we can explain this away," she said.

Donovan thought fast. "I don't think anybody will notice."

Julie pursed her lips. "I hope you're right."

Presently they found themselves at a security checkpoint. Two Shock Troopers stopped them at the gate, their rifles in full view. "Passes?" said the one who leaned into Mike's window.

Mike took Julie's pass and gave them both to the alien soldier. "Engineering Division," he said as he handed them off. "Checking for faults in the support structure." He noticed that Julie kept her palm up as she put her right hand on her lap.

After inspecting the passes the Shock Trooper gave them back to Mike. "Alright," he said, waving his rifle casually towards the pumping station. Donovan nodded at the soldier and drove in.

"Looks like we got away with that one," he said to Julie.

He parked the car at the first open spot he saw and turned the motor off. Julie just sat in her seat, not moving. He looked at her for a few moments before she turned to him.

"I'm alright!" she said, sounding exactly like a Visitor.

"You sure sound funny," Donovan joked.

They exited the car and walked towards a platform that spanned over the width that spanned the pipes from the pumping station itself, which sat at the bottom of the hill on the shore of Lake Castaic, and . But before they went inside the station, they looked back at the gargantuan Mother Ship hovering above the mountains surrounding Lake Castaic.

"Look at that," Julie said, the electronic device which made her voice sound like a Visitor's unable to disguise the sense of sheer awe she felt. Her eyes followed the massive pipes that went from the pumping station up to the Mother Ship. As gigantic as they looked up close, they looked like toothpicks to her by the point they connected to the Mother Ship. She felt very small and insignificant looking at the massive spacecraft and found herself feeling slightly dizzy after a few seconds.

Mike nodded, then spun around. He gestured down towards the lake. "They're sucking it dry."

He saw Julie's face adopt a doleful expression. He completely understood why she suddenly looked so sad; he felt the same way, after all. The sheer scale of the task their group had to pull off intimidated him and made him question whether or not it was even possible.

But he shook such thoughts away from his head, redirecting his focus to the task at hand. He gently touched Julie's elbow, who was still staring at the Mother Ship. She looked at him.

"Let's go down and mingle," he said.

"Okay."

Together they made the trek down the hill to the pumping station itself. They walked between a pair of the gigantic pipes, with Donovan stopping every now and then to photograph and record some details of interest, using a Visitor camera that the Fifth Column provided.

They stopped at a panel of gauges and instruments installed on the pipe to their left. "It's on a 24-hour cycle," Julie said, her voice nearly drowned out by the noise of the machinery and the muffled sounds of water rushing through the pipes. "Right now it's at 200,000, but this system can move a million gallons of water a second at peak capacity!"

"You!" yelled a voice from somewhere above them. A Shock Trooper was perched atop the pipe, with another one on the other pipe. Both pointed their rifles in Mike and Julie's general direction. "What are you doing down there?"

"Checking for faults," Mike yelled back. "We have authorization."

"Move along!"

"Looks like they're serious about security," Donovan said quietly. "Come on."

Mike and Julie left the instrument panel and continued their journey down the hill. And that's when they noticed that, every fifty feet or so, there was a Shock Trooper positioned atop each pipe. They picked up the pace.

They reached the pumping station and entered, shedding their Visitor shades immediately. Though they were nowhere near the heart of the facility, the noise level just inside the plant was already deafening. "At least we don't really need to sneak around," Donovan said.

"Yeah," Julie said. "Do you know where we're going?"

"This way."

He led her up some stairs, then opened a door. Before them was a gigantic open area where the super-powerful water pumps and hydroelectric generators were installed. The thunderous din, already uncomfortably loud, was even worse in here.

Donovan wobbled a bit as he stepped onto the catwalk just beyond the door.

"You okay?" Julie yelled over the noise.

Mike nodded. "Just a bit... scared of heights," he said.

Julie held onto his arm tightly, but he squeezed her hand. "I'll be okay," he said. "I just need some time to get used to it."

"You sure?"

Mike nodded again.

"Just don't look down for too long," Julie said.

After a minute spent composing himself, Mike stepped onto the catwalk again. He let Julie lead, just so he could look at her instead of being tempted to look down onto the open area beneath them. He reached out to her after a few feet. "I've got a good angle here," he said, withdrawing the camera from his equipment belt. He started shooting, panning across from left to right, then from high to low. "Okay," he said after a minute and a half of filming. "I've got enough from that angle. Let's go."

They traveled the catwalk again, when Julie pointed to the opposite side of the cavernous room. "Take a shot of that panel over there!" Donovan complied.

Systematically they went through the facility, filming as they went. Whenever they entered an area filled with Visitors, they made a show of inspecting various equipment before filming again. Once or twice they were asked about what they were doing, but presenting their passes and a brief word of explanation was all they needed to do to resume their reconnaissance work.

Donovan even taught Julie how to use the Visitor camera, and allowed her to use it a couple of times. One time, though, she held and operated it using her left hand. He didn't say anything when she did so, but she eventually felt his stare on her.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing," he said.

She looked at him doubtfully, then realized why he had been staring at her. "My right hand hurts," she said shakily, holding it up to show him her wounds again.

"Don't worry about it," was all he said.

**VVVVV**

Julie and Mike spent virtually the whole day at Castaic, so she was very glad when they finally returned to headquarters. She was tired out of her mind, her stamina depleted by the lack of physical activity when she was up on the Mother Ship. She was dying for a hot shower and a spot of dinner. She raised no objections, then, when Mike said she could go first; he was going to give the footage they shot to Tyler for editing and analysis.

After her shower, she felt much better. She put on fresh clothing and wrapped her bathrobe around herself, then went to the bathroom mirror. She picked up her brush and started to work it through her hair. _That feels so good_, she thought, when she suddenly stopped. She stared at her own reflection, horrified by what she saw.

She was using her _left hand_.

Angrily, she put the brush into her other hand and started to work on her hair again. She quit after just a few pulls, dropping the brush onto the counter with a clatter.

She walked out of the bathroom, tears on the verge of falling, when she saw Mike clad in just his jeans. He was folding his Visitor uniform so it could be put away.

Julie felt a momentary twinge of terror in her heart, but she squashed the feeling through sheer force of will. Her gaze dropped to the floor of the train car, but she forced herself to look at him straight in the eyes.

"Where's everyone?" she asked.

He shrugged. "At dinner, I guess."

She walked slowly towards him. A million thoughts raced through her head. Although she spent the entire day with him, she couldn't deny that throughout that day she felt very ill at ease. Things weren't so bad when other people could see them together. Even when those other people were Visitors, she felt much better.

But in the car ride to and then from Castaic, and now here, alone in the train...

"It's so strange, being alone with you," she confessed.

Mike looked at her, his gaze steady. "I like that," he said, somewhat mysteriously.

She walked towards him, even though her heart beat faster with every step she took. "Mike, I'm really frightened," she said when she was next to him.

"Why?"

"I'm afraid they're winning."

"They'll never get that far."

"Not unless I help them, and I don't know I'm doing it."

He looked at her, concern furrowing his brow. "What's wrong?"

"It's just –," she stammered, "I feel funny. I'm not exactly in control." Her eyes glistened from tears that she refused to let fall. She had let him see her cry too often already; she just didn't want to let him see that again. But she remembered the moment at Castaic when he let her use the camera, and she remembered the moment in the bathroom with her hair brush. "I'm starting to use my left hand! I'm beginning to think that maybe I really –"

"You're not converted," he said, his hands holding her shoulders with a surprising gentleness. "The fact that you have doubts proves it."

"I don't know –"

"**I** do," he said, firmly but gently. His fingers brushed away a tear on her cheek that escaped. "You're a little shaken right now. Nobody could go through what you did and not have scars." He smiled at her to reassure her. "But you beat them. You're gonna be just fine."

Julie closed her eyes, and in doing so she let go, allowing more tears to fall. She was suddenly conscious that her heart no longer beat fast and hard from fear and trepidation; it was still going hard and fast, but she felt no fear at this moment.

Myriad pictures flashed in her mind, pictures of her memories of his face from over the last few months. Then she remembered the lust in his eyes, the devilish glee on his face, when Diana somehow made her believe that he had killed her mother, and that he molested her as a child, and that he raped her in the hospital elevator shaft. She remembered, but she felt no fear as he held her now.

And then she remembered the moment when he smashed through the window into the conversion chamber, and she remembered the anguish on his face. She remembered what she felt when she saw him take the laser blast that sent him toppling backwards and away from her.

The moment she thought he died right in front of her eyes.

Remembering _that_ moment – remembering his face then – brought fear back into her heart.

Julie realized that she wasn't afraid of him. She was afraid _for _him. And the difference between these emotions made all the difference in the universe.

"I just wish it would all stop, at least for a little while," she said.

He ran a hand through her hair, his eyes aglow with tenderness. "I'll keep an eye on you for a while," he said, "if you think that'll help."

She smiled up at him. "I'd been getting the idea you've been doing that anyway."

"You have?"

"Yeah."

And at that moment, the two of them suddenly became aware that their relationship had changed. It was a change that they both felt, one they experienced simultaneously. Self-consciousness, and the barriers they had kept around their innermost selves, just melted away. What was left was a willingness to be open to each other, completely and absolutely. She felt it, and she felt that he felt it too.

He smiled at her, somewhat shyly. It only endeared him to her even more. "I... I didn't want to push anything, you know," he began to say, stammering, "because –"

And she smiled at him, genuinely amused. "That's the first time I've ever seen you stumble."

She didn't resist when he drew her close to him, and when he started to kiss her she surrendered to him completely.


End file.
